/ 



c 




CRUMBS 
SWEPT UP. 




k 




CI 1 I) E H 1 N n. 



'fL^S- 



CRUMBS SWEPT UP 



BY 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 





PHILADELPHIA 

EVANS, STODDART & CO. 

740 Sansom Street 

BROOKLYN N. Y. 67 FULTON AVENUE 

1870. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

EVANS, STODDART & CO., 

in the Office of tTie Librarian of Congress at Washington. 

STEREOTYPED BY J. PAGAN & SON. 



/ 



^ r 




A PREFACE 




S for explanation or apology. 



^ Many of these articles have ap- 



peared in the periodicals, but 
some of the chapters for the first time now 
go into print. 

We think it unwise to apologize for what 
we have on our dining-table. If it be good,, 
all excuse is hypocrisy ; if it be poor, let us 
postpone the news of our failure as long as 
possible. We shall be glad if the book makes 
any one happy. Thinking it bad manners to 
keep friends standing long at the front door, 
we invite the reader to come in and help him- 
self. However plain the furniture may be, we 

bid him Welcome I 

Brooklyn, Sept. i6th, 1870. 

T. D. W. T. 



i CONTENTS 



^^tsK^' 



PACK 

CUT BEHIND 13 

ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED . . . . . 20 

OUR SPECTACLES 28 

THE KILKENNY CATS ....... 37 

MINISTERS' SUNSHINE 46 

OUR FIRST BOOTS 78 

IN STIRRUPS . . . S3 

GOOD CHEER . . . . 92 

THE OLD CLOCK " . . .99 

OUT-OF-DOORS 107 

HOBBIES , . "9 

STAR ENGAGEMENT .157 

CHILDREN'S BOOKS .163 

CLERICAL FARMING 169 

MAKING THINGS GO 176 

SATURDAY NIGHT .182 

ix 



X CONTENTS. 

THE HATCHET BURIED i88 

HOUSE OF DOGS I93 

PRAYER -MEETING KILLERS 204 

RIP— RAP . . • 211 

THE RIGHT TRACK 220 

RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK .... 227 
CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED . . . .234 

GHOSTS . . 244 

DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS 252 

CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY 257 

SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS OF WATERING-PLACES . 266 

SWALLOWING A FLY 311 

SPOILED CHILDREN 321 



NIBBLINGS IN FOREIGN PASTURES. 

THE SMILE OF THE SEA ' 333 

POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE 341 

EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN -STIMULANT . . .351 

FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA 363 

STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY . . . . .370 

WAR TO THE KNIFE 379 

FRESH PAINT 385 

BRUTES 396 



CONTENTS, 



XI 

PAGB 
407 



4 NATION STUNNED ...... 

"N" ... 413 

PICTURES FELT 420 

CHAMPS ELYSEES 437 




-^ 







■■^<^^^:^^r7 



CUT BEHIND. 




[CENE : — A crisp morning. Carriage 
with spinning wheels, whose spokes 
gHsten hke splinters of the sun. 
Roan horse, flecked with foam, bending into 
the bit, his polished feet drumming the pave- 
ment in challenge of any horse that thinks he 
can go as fast. Two boys running to get on 
the back of the carriage. One of them, with 
quick spring, succeeds. The other leaps, but 
fails, and falls on the part of the body where it 
is most appropriate to fall. No sooner has he 
struck the ground than he shouts to the driver 
of the carriage, " Cut behind ! " 

2 13 



14 CUT BEHIND. 

Human nature the same in boy as man. 
All running to gain the vehicle of success. 
Some are spry, and gain that for which they 
strive. Others are slow, and tumble down ; 
they who fall crying out against those who 
mount, " Cut behind ! " 

A political office rolls past. A multitude 
spring to their feet, and the race is in. Only 
one of all the number reaches that for which 
he runs. No sooner does he gain the prize, 
and begin to wipe the sweat from his brow, 
and think how erand a thinof it is to ride 

o o 

in popular preferment, than the disappointed 
candidates cry out : " Incompetency ! Stu- 
pidity! Fraud! Now let the newspapers and 
platforms of the country * cut behind ! ' " 

There is a golden chariot of wealth rolling 
down the street. A thousand people are 
trying to catch it. They run. They jostle. 
They tread on each other. Push, and pull, 
and \M<y \ Those talk most acrainst riches who 
cannot get them. Clear the track for the 
racers I One of the thousand reaches the 
golden prize, and mounts. Forthwith the air 
is full of cries : " Got it by fraud ! Shoddy I 



CUT BEHIND. I5 

Petroleum aristocracy ! His father was a rag- 
picker ! His mother was a washerwoman ! I 
knew him when he blackened his own shoes ! 
Pitch him off the back part of the golden 
chariot! Cut behind! Cut behind!''' 

It is strange that there should be any rival- 
ries among ministers of religion, when there 
is so much room for all to work. But in some 
things they are much like other people. Like 
all other classes of men, they have one liver 
apiece, and here and there one of them a 
spleen. In all cases the epigastric region Is 
higher up than the hypogastric, save In the act 
of turning somerset. Like others, they eat 
three times a day when they can get anything 
to eat. Besides this, It sometimes happens 
that we find them racing for some professional 
chair or pulpit. They run well — neck and 
neck — while churches look on and wonder 
whether it will be "Dexter" or the "American 
Girl." Rowels plunge deep, and fierce is the 
cry, " Go 'long ! Go 'long ! " The privilege 
of preaching the gospel to the poor on five 
thousand dollars a year Is enough to make a 
tight race anywhere. But only one mounts 



l6 CUT BEHIND. 

the coveted place ; and forthwith the cry goes 
up In consociations and synods : " Unfit for the 
place ! Can't preach ! Unsound in the faith ! 
Now is your chance, O conferences and pres- 
byteries, to CUT BEHIND ! " 

A fair woman passes. We all admire 
beauty. He that says he don't, lies. A cant- 
ing man, who told me he had no admiration 
for anything earthly, used, instead of listening 
to the sermon, to keep squinting over toward 
the pew where sat Squire Brown's daughter. 
Whether God plants a rose in parterre or 
human cheek, we must admire It, whether we 
will or not. While we are deciding whether 
we had better take that dahlia, the dahlia takes 
us. A star does not ask the astronomer to 
admire it; but just winks at him, and he sur- 
renders, with all his telescopes. This fair 
woman in society has many satellites. The 
boys all run for this prize. One of them, not 
having read enough novels to learn that ugli- 
ness is more desirable than beauty, wins her. 
The cry Is up : " She paints ! Looks well ; but 
she knows It. Good shape ; but I wonder what 
is the price of cotton ! Won't she make him 



CUT BEHIND. 1/ 

Stand around ! Practicality worth more than 
black eyes ! Fool to marry a virago ! " 

In many eyes success Is a crime. " I do not 
like you," said the snowflake to the snowbird. 
"Why?" said the snowbird. "Because," said 
the snowflake, '^ you are going up, and I am 
going doivn!'' 

We have to state that the man In the car- 
riage on the crisp morning, though he had a 
long lash-whip, with which he could have made 
the climbing boy yell most lustily, did not cut 
behind. He was an old man ; In the corner of 
his mouth a smile, which was always as ready 
to play as a kitten that watches for some one 
with a string to offer the slightest Inducement. 
He heard the shout in the rear, and said: 
" Good morning, my son. That is right ; climb 
over and sit by me. Here are the reins ; take 
hold, and drive. Was a boy myself once, and 
I know what tickles youngsters." 

Thank God there are so many in the world 
that never " cut behind," but are ready to give 
a fellow a ride whenever he wants It. Here 
is a young man, clerk in a store. He has 
small wages, and a mother to take care of. 

2* B 



l8 CUT BEHIND. 

For ten years he struggles to get Into a higher 
place. The first of January comes, and the 
head of the commercial house looks round and 
says, " Trying to get up, are you ? " And by 
the time three more years have passed the boy 
sits right beside the old man, who hands over 
the reins, and says, " Drive ! " for the old mer- 
chant knew what would tickle the youngster. 
Jonathan Goodhue was a boy behind the 
counter; but his employer gave him a ride, 
and London, Canton, and Calcutta heard the 
scratch of his pen. Lenox, Grinnell, and the 
Aspinwalls carried many young men a mile on 
the high road of prosperity. 

There are hundreds of people whose chief 
joy Is to help others on. Now It Is a smile, 
now a good word, now ten dollars. May such 
a kind man always have a carriage to ride In 
and a horse not too skittish ! As he gfoes 
down the hill of life, may the breeching - 
strap be strong enough to hold back the 
load ! 

When he has ridden to the end of the 
earthly road, he avIII have plenty of friends to 
help him unhitch and assist him out of the 



CUT BEHIND. 



19 



carriage. On that cool night It will be pleas- 
ant to hang up the whip with which he drove 
the enterprises of a lifetime, and feel that 
^ with it he never " cut behind " at those who 
were struggling. 





ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 




ER mother did not do right. So 
Bessie was the chief Ho^ht of her 
father's house. In childhood, light- 
footed, merry-hearted, bright-eyed, she skipped 
into the admiration of all who saw her. You 
could no more keep her out of your heart than 
you could bar out the breath of honeysuckle 
from your opened window. People passed In 
the street, and looked down Into her eyes, and 
stopped, and asked who It was, and found out 
that It was Bessie the beautiful. In choicest 
school she was educated, and returned home 
with all the graces of young womanhood, the 
Inrushing light of a new morning, before which 
the long- shadows lifted. In the drawlne-room, 

while the groups of young people moved round, 

20 



ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 21 

her father not long at a time kept his eye off 
her who was unconsciously becoming his idol. 
To him no one had so sweet a voice, so capti- 
vating a manner, so kind a heart, so loving a 
disposition. But Bessie responded with full 
as much ardor of affection. She well knew 
how to stroke the care out of her father's 
troubled brow. With griefs that he could tell 
no other, he often woke her at midnight, and 
went back to his own pillow comforted. Open- 
ing his own door at nightfall, before he had 
time to see the skeleton of trouble that hung 
before the hearth, there burst upon him the 
laughter of his child, like a warm shower 
against a bank of blasted heather. 

Next to God, upon whom this good man 
stayed his soul, was the love and sympathy of 
Bessie the beautiful. They sat together as 
lovers sit, and walked out in the hush of the 
moonlight, and together visited the hovel of 
the sick, one hand on her father's arm, the 
other thrust through a basket of delicacies that 
would be cool and pleasant to the parched lips. 
The one with deep voice would offer a prayer 
for the coming of God's angel of help, and the 



22 ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 

sick man would look up to where the maiden 
stood, and would think that the prayer was 
already answered, and the angel come. 

But Bessie changed her mind. Maidens 
will sometimes change their minds. Not that 
she loved her father less, but that she loved 
another more. Old eagles need not, I can tell 
them, expect always to keep young eaglets in 
their eyry. Who ever had in his cage a bird 
of glossy wing and gushing song, but some 
one else looked at It wistfully, and wondered 
if in some other cage its wing would not be 
just as glossy, and its song as sweet? One 
day the father looked at the vine that had only 
one blossom, and behold there were two. One 
for him — one for another. The father's blos- 
som no smaller, but the other a little deeper 
hued. A young man plucked the one to wear 
on his own heart. 

The church was lighted. All through the 
Western city it had been whispered that the 
silver hammer was about to fall on the altar, 
smiting two lives into one. As the lights 
flashed up, they did not seem to flame steadily, 



ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 23 

as on Sabbath eve ; but with a throb, and 
flicker, and nervous tremor, as though they 
were ready to leap and laugh, not wishing 
merely to light others, but wanting for them- 
selves to see. A dense mass of people filled 
the house, and, with their heads half turned 
toward the door, waited in thrill of expecta- 
tion. The door opened, and with exciting 
buzz, hundreds of voices said : " There they 
come!" But, no! It was only the minister, 
book under arm, stepping lighter than on other 
days, rejoicing to think with how few words he 
might make two people happy. Men took out 
their watches, and said : " They are five minutes 
late ! " But blame them not, for what are five 
minutes to a couple at such a time, when they 
live fifty years in half an hour ? Again there 
was a step in the vestibule, and this time it 
was certain that the parties had come, and rib- 
bons fluttered, and pew-doors on middle aisle 
swung shut to give clear way to the long trail 
of the dresses. But, no ! it was an aged man, 
who had held Bessie's father on his knee, and 
who had come in, wondering how time flits by, 
and saying to some one who got up and gave 



24 ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 

him a seat : " I thought I would attend one 
more wedding before I die. It seems only 
yesterday when I trotted her on my knee ! 
How these young things do sprout up ! Bless 
me ! if I were only a little younger, I would 
have contested for that prize." But at last 
there was the unmistakable clash of wheels 
and hoofs — for horses always know when they 
are going to a wedding — and orders to stand 
back, and as the organ, unable longer to hold 
its peace, breaks forth in the wedding march, 
keys, pedals, stops, and pipes are as much 
excited as if it were themselves about to be 
made happy. 

My heart got in my throat, as, standing at 
the altar, I saw the brilliant line advance, rustle, 
and tramp, and gleam, and ruddy cheek, and 
fluttering hearts, and streaming veil. The 
attendants came first, man and maiden, parting 
at the foot of the altar, and going to either 
side, as a stream breaks in twain at the foot 
of mossed rock, to join again, perchance, a 
little further down the hill. At last confronted 
me the tall figure of a young man, with lips 
whiter than was his wont : on his arm, blushing 



ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 2$ 

as any climbing rose, when in a strong breeze 
it leans its whole weight upon a trembling 
trellis, was Bessie the beautiful. This stream 
broke not at the foot of the mossed rock. A 
hush came down, such as drops from heaven, 
and as they bowed for a blessing, and the ring 
was set, and in strong, clear, sweet voice came 
from that girl's lips the solemn " T will," in all 
eyes the tears started — not grief-struck tears, 
but glad as morning dewdrops glistening in 
the blue eyes of violets. " God bless her ! " 
said young and old ; " God bless her ! " said 
the' working -woman who had helped bring up 
Bessie, and who, to the astonishment of all, 
had walked into the church right behind the 
bridal party, saying to those who told her to 
stand back : " I brought her up, and I will see 
her married ! " As the bridal party passed 
out, the whole church was perfumed with 
orange - blossoms. As I think of it, now that 
years have gone by, though much of the scene 
has faded from my mind, every avenue and 
cell of memory is filled till they can hold no 
more with the odor of the oranore-blossoms. 
Time passed on, and the vine put forth 
3 



26 ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 

another flower. In its blooming, the vine 
withered aivay. Another Hfe given, but one 
gone. The hand that launched an immortal 
on the sea falls benumbed of the blast that 
came off the waters. The church again is 
lighted. There is a dense throng filling seats, 
aisles, and doorways. The assemblage that 
came before come again. Joy gathered us 
before, grief convoked us now. The one upon 
whom hundreds of eyes concentrated then is 
the chief object of interest now. She wears 
not the bridal veil, but a chaplet of flowers 
about her brow, white and beautiful as her 
own glorified spirit. A procession again comes 
up the aisle, but with slower and more solemn 
tread. She is happier now than then. She 
wears the same dress, for in what garment so 
well should such an one be wrapped as in 
bright marriage apparel ? Tears then, and 
tears now, but those were sun-glistened, these 
are thunder-shaken. The same organ sounds, 
but a dirge tramples the pedal. The same 
lips speak from the altar ; but then they offered 
congratulation — now they utter condolence. 
The wreath on the cold, white brow looks 



ORANGE-BLOSSOMS FROSTED. 



27 



like an April crocus on a ridge of virgin 
snow. 

A story told in four short sentences : 

a black hawk swooped upon the brood ! 

Ring broken! 

Lights out! 

Orange-blossoms frosted ! 





OUR SPECTACLES. 




MAN never looks more dignified 
dian when he takes a spectacle-case 
from his pocket, opens it, unfolds a 
lens, sets it astride his nose, and looks you in 
the eye. I have seen audiences overawed by 
such a demonstration, feeling that a man who 
could handle glasses In that way must be equal 
to anything. We have known a lady of plain 
face, who, by placing an adornment of this 
kind on the bridge of her nose, could give an 
irresistible look, and by one glance around 
the room would transfix and eat up the hearts 
of a dozen old bachelors. 

There are men, who, though they never read 
a word of Latin or Greek, have, by such facial 
appendage, been made to look so classical, 

2$ 



OUR SPECTACLES. 29 

that the moment they gaze on you, you quiver 
as if you had been struck by Sophocles or 
Jupiter. We strongly suspect that a pair of 
glasses on a minister's nose would be worth to 

o 

him about three hundred and seventy- six dol- 
lars and forty -two cents additional salary. 
Indeed, we have known men who had kept 
their parishes quiet by this spectacular power. 
If Deacon Jones criticized, or Mrs. Go -about 
gossiped, the dominie would get them in range, 
shove his glasses from the tip of his nose close 
up to his eyebrows, and concentre all the 
majesty of his nature into a look that consumed 
all opposition easier than the burning-glass of 
Archimedes devoured the Roman ships. 

But nearly all, young and old, near-sighted, 
and far-sighted, look through spectacles. By 
reason of our prejudices, or education, or 
temperament, things are apt to come to us 
magnified, or lessened, or distorted. We all 
see things differently — not so much because 
our eyes are different, as because the medium 
through which we look is different. 

Some of us wear blue spectacles, and con- 
sequently everything is blue. Taking our 
3* 



30 OUR SPECTACLES. 

position at Trinity Church, and looking down 
Wall Street, everything is gloomy and depress- 
ing in financials, and looking up Broadway, 
everything is horrible in the fashions of the 
day. All is wrong in churches, wrong in edu- 
cation, wrong in society. An undigested slice 
of corned-beef has covered up all the bright 
prospects of the world. A drop of vinegar 
has extinguished a star. We understand all 
the variations of a growl. What makes the 
sunshine so dull, the foliage so gloomy, men 
so heavy, and the world so dark ? Blue spec- 
tacles, my dear, 

BLUE SPECTACLES ! 

An unwary young man comes to town. He 
buys elegant silk pocket - handkerchiefs on 
Chatham Street for twelve cents, and diamonds 
at the dollar-store. He supposes that when a 
play Is advertised " for one night only," he will 
have but one opportunity of seeing it. He 
takes a greenback with an X on it as a sure sign 
that it is ten dollars, not knowing there are 
counterfeits. He takes five shares of silver- 
mining stock in the company for developing 



OUR SPECTACLES. 3I 

the resources of the moon. He supposes that 
every man that dresses well is a gentleman. 
He goes to see the lions, not knowing that any 
of them will bite ; and that when people go to 
see the lions, the lions sometimes come out to 
see them. He has an idea that fortunes lie 
thickly around, and all he will have to do is to 
stoop down and pick one up. Having been 
brought up where the greatest dissipation was 
a blacksmith - shop on a rainy day, and where 
the gold on the wheat is never counterfeit, and 
buckwheat - fields never issue false stock, and 
brooks are always " current," and ripe fall- 
pippins are a legal - tender, and blossoms are 
honest when they promise to pay, he was un- 
prepared to resist the allurements of city life. 
A sharper has fleeced him, an evil companion 
has despoiled him, a policeman's "billy" has 
struck him on the head, or a prison's turnkey 
bids him a orruff " Good - niofht ! " 

What got him into all this trouble ? Can 
any moral optician inform us ? Green goggles, 
my dear, 

GREEN goggles! 

Your neighbor's first great idea in life is a 



32 OUR SPECTACLES, 

dollar; the second Idea is a dollar — making 
in all two dollars. The smaller ideas are cents. 
Friendship is with him a mere question of loss 
and gain. He will want your name on his 
note. Every time he shakes hands, he esti- 
mates the value of such a greeting. He is 
down on Fourth of Julys and Christmas Days, 
because on them you spend money Instead of 
making it. He has reduced everything in life 
to vulgar fractions. He has been hunting" all 
his life for the cow that had the golden calf. 
He has cut the Lord's Prayer on the back of a 
three - cent piece, his only regret that he has 
spoiled the piece. He has calculated how 
much the Interest Avould have been on the 
widow's " two mites" if she had only kept them 
till now. He thinks that the celestial city with 
pavements of gold is a great waste of bullion. 
No steel or bone eye-glass would fit the bridge 
of his nose. Throueh what does he look ? 
Gold spectacles, my dear, 



GOLD SPECTACLES 



I know a man who sees everything as it is : 
black is black, white Is white, and speckled is 



OUR SPECTACLES. 33 

speckled. He looks straight through a man, 
taking him at any point — heart, lungs, liver, 
ribs, backbone being no obstruction. People 
pass before him for what they are worth. The 
color of the skin is nothing, the epaulettes 
nothing, the spurs are nothing. He thinks no 
more of a dog because it once ran under the 
carriage of the Lord Mayor ; and when a 
prince has an attack of nose - bleeding, the 
blood seems no more royal than that of other 
people. He takes out of one of his vest- 
pockets, scales, in which he weighs a man In 
an Instant. He takes out of the other vest- 
pocket a chemical apparatus, by which he tells 
how much of the man Is solid, and how much 
gas. He never saw an angel or a spook. 
He never had a presentiment. Rather than 
trouble the spirits of the future world to come 
this way, he concludes to wait till he can go to 
them. He consults no wizard to find out the 
future ; but by honest Industry and Christian 
principle, tells his own fortune. The number 
of cats that wake him up at unseasonable hours 
is four, while to others it would have been fifty. 

In the music of his life there are but few stac- 

c 



34 OUR SPECTACLES. 

cato passages. He uses no microscope to 
enlarge the little, or telescope to bring hither 
the distant, but simply a plain pair of spec- 
tacles, honest spectacles, 

TRUTH-SPEAKING SPECTACLES ! 

But sometimes these optical instruments get 
old and dim. Grandmother's pair had done 
good work in their day. They were large and 
round, so that when she saw a thing she saw 
it. There was a crack across the upper part 
of the glass, for many a baby had made them 
a plaything, and all the grandchildren had at 
some time tried them on. They had some- 
times been so dimmed with tears that she had 
to take them off and wipe them on her apron 
before she could see through them at all. 
Her " second - sight " had now come, and she 
would often let her glasses slip down, and then 
look over the top of them while she read. 
Grandmother was pleased at this return of her 
vision. Getting along so well without them, 
she often lost her spectacles. Sometimes they 
would lie for weeks untouched on the shelf in 
the red morocco case, the flap unlifted. She 



OUR SPECTACLES. 35 

could now look off upon the hills, which for 
thirty years she had not been able to see from 
the piazza. Those were mistaken who thought 
she had no poetry in her soul. You could see 
it in the way she put her hand under the chin 
of a primrose, or cultured the geranium. Sit- 
ting on the piazza one evening, in her rocking- 
chair, she saw a ladder of cloud set up against 
the sky, and thought how easy it would be for 
a spirit to climb it. She saw in the deep glow 
of the sunset a chariot of fire, drawn by horses 
of fire, and wondered who rode in it. She saw 
a vapor floating thinly away, as though it were 
a wing ascending, and Grandmother muttered 
in a low tone : '' A vapor that appeareth for a 
little season, and then vanisheth away." She 
saw a hill higher than any she had ever seen 
before on the horizon, and on the top of it a 
King's castle. The motion of the rocking- 
chair became slighter and slighter, until it 
stopped. The spectacles fell out of her lap. 
A child, hearing it, ran to pick them up, and 
cried: "Grandmother, what is the matter?" 
She answered not. She never spake again. 
Second - sight had come ! Her vision had 



36 OUR SPECTACLES. 

grown better and better. What she could not 
see now was not worth seeing. Not now 
through a glass darkly/ Grandmother had 
no more need of spectacles ! 






THE KILKENNY CATS. 

MONG the beautiful hills of an inland 
county of Ireland, occurred a tragedy 
with which we are all familiar. It 
seems that one day, urged on by a malevolent 
and violent spirit, two cats ate each other up, 
leaving nothing but the tips of their tails. 
There never has been a more exhaustive treat- 
ment of any subject. 

We were once disposed to take the whole 
account as apocryphal. We asked ourselves 
how it was possible. There are anatomical 
and mathematical laws denying it. Admit a 
moment, for the sake of argument, that they 
succeeded in masticating each other s heads, 
all progress must have ceased at that point, 
for the teeth of both parties having been de- 

4 37 



38 THE KILKENNY CATS. 

stroyed, how could they have pursued their 
physiological investigations any further? Be- 
side this, digestion could not have been going 
on in both their stomachs at the same time, 
for at the hour when the salivary fluid was 
passing from the parotid and submaxillary 
glands of cat number one upon cat number 
two, the pancreatic secretions in the latter 
would have been so neutralized that they could 
not have acted upon the organism of the 
former. (See Bardach on " Physiology ; " Trev- 
iranus on "Uniformity of Phenomena;" Van 
Helmont on the "Cardiac Orifice;" Sylvius 
on " Chyle ; " Martin Farquhar Tupper on 
"Solitude;" and Blumenbach on " Nisus For- 
mativus.") 

Furthermore : The conclusion of the Kil- 
kenny story in regard to the' uninjured ex- 
tremities of the two cats would seem to prove 
the fallacy of the whole narrative, because the 
ferocity of felines which stopped not for ribs, 
back -bone, sirloin, and haunches, would have 
gone on till none would have been left to tell 
the tale. 

Nevertheless, I must accept the historical 



THE KILKENNY CATS. 39 

accuracy of the statement. It is confirmed by 
the Fathers and contemporary witnesses, and 
by our own observation. In our boyhood, the 
housekeeper complained about a cat that was 
perpetually ravaging the milk - pans ; and so 
we descended into the cellar with a bean-pole, 
expecting at one blow to wreak capital punish- 
ment upon the depredator. It was one of the 
evilest hours of our lives. Sitting in our study 
this morning, at peace with all the world, we 
shudder at the reminiscence. At our first 
stroke, the cat of ordinary dimensions swelled 
up into a monster, that with glaring eyes darted 
after us. We felt that our future usefulness, 
and the interests of the Reformed Dutch 
Church, with which we were then connected, 
depended upon the strength of our bean-pole, 
and with one terrific stroke we sent her back 
to the wall of the cellar. Each stroke of our 
weapon increased the circumference of her 
eyes, the height of her bristles, the length of 
her tail, and the agony of the encounter. Our 
bean - pole broke ! but this only roused us to 
more determination. What a story it would 
be to tell, that a youth, fresh from scanning 



40 THE KILKENNY CATS. 

Virgil, and from parsing of Milton's Battle of 
Archangels, had been killed by a cat ! That 
should never be ! She came up with redoubled 
fury, the dirt flying from her paws, and her 
intensity of feeling on the subject emphasized 
by a supernatural spit. We called out for re- 
enforcements. The housekeeper came with 
broomstick to the charge. We gave her the 
field. We did not want to monopohze all the 
glory of the affray. W^e stood on the steps 
with every possible word of encouragement 
We told her that the eyes of the world were 
upon her. We cried : " Give it to her ! " All 
our sympathies were with the broomstick ; and 
it is sufficient to remark that we won the day. 
I have been ready ever since to believe the 
story of the Kilkenny cats. If any other cat, 
and in the same frame of mind, had met the 
one that we fought, they would not have stop- 
ped, they could not have been appeased, they 
would have clinched, gnawed, chewed up, 
ground to pieces, and devoured each other, 
and the melancholy event with which we 
opened this chapter would have been equalled, 
if not surpassed. 



THE KILKENNY CATS. 4I 

But why go SO far to look for Kilkenny cats, 
when we could, in three minutes, point you out 
a dozen ? 

Two men go to law about some Insignificant 
thing. They retain counsel, enter complaints, 
subpoena witnesses, empanel juries, hear ver- 
dicts, make appeals, multiply costs. Adjourn- 
ment after adjournment, vexation after vexa- 
tion, business neglected, patience exhausted, 
years wasted, and on both sides the last dollar 
spent, the cats have interlocked their paws, 
clashed each other's teeth, opened each other's 
jav/s, and gulped down each other's all ! Ex- 
termination more complete than that of Kil- 
kenny. 

Two women slander each other. " You are 
a miserable creature ! " says one. " You 're 
another ! " Is the reply. Each one hauls out to 
public gaze all the frailties of her antagonist. 
They malign each other's hats as shocking, 
each other's hair as false, each other's teeth as 
bad specimens of dentistry. While Betsy is 
going up Fourth Street to denounce Hannah, 
Hannah is going down Fifth Street slashing 
Betsy. Oh ! they do hate each other with a 



42 THE KILKENNY CATS. 

relish ! If they should happen to come Into 
physical encounter, the whole field of conflict 
would be strewn with chignons, frizettes, 
switches, pads, bustles, chests that had ceased 
to heave, false calves, Marie Antoinette slip- 
pers, and French heels. These two cats meet 
on cross-streets, and their eyes flare, and there 
is a sudden dash, and the fur flies, and down 
the hill of respectability they roll together, 
over and over and over, covered with dirt and 
slush — now one on the top, now the other, 
now neither, for they have both vanished. 
Exetmt cats of Kilkenny ! 

A church is divided Into two parties. What 
one likes the other abhors. They feel it their 
duty to stick to it. In the devotional meet^ 
ing they pray at each other's inconsistencies, 
hoping that the prayer will go to heaven, but 
by the way of Deacon Rafferty's pew, just 
stopping a moment to give him a shaking. If 
one wants the church built on the hill, the other 
wants It down by the saw - mill. If the one 
wants the minister to avoid politics, the other 
would like to have him get up on the side of 
the pulpit and give three cheers for John 



THE KIL KE NN V CA TS. 43 

Brown's knapsack, which Is said to be still 
"strapped upon his back!" When Elder 
Bangs sits still in prayer, Elder Crank stands 
up to show his contempt for such behavior. 
If one puts ten cents on the plate, the other 
throws a dollar on the top of it, to show his 
abhorrence of such parsimony. The whole 
church catches the quarrelsome spirit, and be- 
gins to go down. One -half of the choir eats 
up the other half The pew devours the 
pulpit, and the pulpit swallows the pew. The 
session take down the trustees, and the trus- 
tees masticate the session. The Sunday school 
and sewing - society show their teeth, and run 
out their claws, and get their backs up, and 
spit fire. And church councils assemble to 
stop the quarrel, and cry " Scat ! scat ! " to the 
infamous howlers. But the claws go on with 
their work, till t/ie7^e stands the old church 
by the wayside, windowless and forsaken ! 
Nothing more nor less than a monument to 
the memory of the dead ecclesiastical cats of 
Kilkenny ! 

But why should I libel the cats by placing 
them in such disagreeable company? Old 



44 THE KILKENNY CATS, 

Tabby, the Maltese, with a blue ribbon about 
his neck, and a white spot on his face, ever 
since the day his mother took him tenderly by 
the nape of the neck and lifted him out of the 
ash -barrel, the place of his nativity, has been 
a pet of your family. He never had anything 
but a velvet paw for the children that mauled 
him, lifting him by the ears, or pulling him by 
the tail backward up and down the nursery. 
He ate out of the same saucer with the chil- 
dren, not waiting for a spoon. And when a 
pair of little feet stopped short In the journey 
of life, and the white lids covered the eyes like 
untimely snow on violets, and you went in one 
rainy day to look at the little bed on which the 
flaxen curls once lay, you found old Tabby 
curled up on the pillow ; and he looked up as 
if he knew what was the matter. 

Old Tabby Is almost blind now. Mice may 
canter across the floor without disturbing his 
slumber. Many of the hands that stroked 
him are still now, and he knows it. After a 
while his own time will come, and, with all four 
paws stretched out stiff and cold, you will find 
him some mornlnof dead on the door -mat. 



THE KILKENNY CATS. 45 

Then the children will come and wrap him up, 
and carry him out, and dig a hole, and bury 
him with a Sunday-school hymn, putting up a 
board at his head, with this epitaph written in 
lead-pencil : 

Here lies old Tabby! 

ReQUIES CAT IN pace! 

Died in the tenth year of his age, and 

mourned by the whole family. 
This head -board is erected by his sur- 
viving FRIENDS Madge and Charlie! 





MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 




O much has been written of the hard- 
ships of clergymen, small salaries, 
unreasonable churches, mean com- 
mittees, and impudent parishioners, that parents 
seeking for their children's happiness are not 
wont to desire them to enter the sacred call- 
ing. Indeed, the story of empty bread-trays 
and cheerless parsonages has not half been 
told. But there is another side to the picture. 
Ministers* wives are not all vixens, nor their 
children scapegraces. Pastors do not always 
step on thorns and preach to empty benches. 
The parish sewing - society does not always 
roast their pastor over the slow fires of tittle- 
tattle. There is no inevitable connection be- 
tween the gospel and bronchitis. As far as 

46 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 47 

we have observed, the brightest sunshine is 
ministers' sunshine. They have access to re- 
fined circles, means to give a good education 
to their children, friends to stand by them in 
every perplexity, and through the branches 
that drop occasional shadows on their way sifts 
the golden light of great enjoyment. 

It was about six o'clock of a June afternoon, 
the sun striking aslant upon the river, when 
the young minister and his bride were riding 
toward their new home. The air was bewitched 
with fragrance of field and garden, and a hum 
with bees out honey-making. The lengthening 
shadows did not fall on the road the twain 
passed ; at least, they saw none. The leaves 
shook out a welcome, and as the carriao^e rum- 
bled across the bridge in front of the house at 
which they were for a few days to tarry, it 
seemed as if hoof and wheel understood the 
transport of the hour. The weeks of bridal 
congratulation had ended, and here they were 
at the door of the good deacon who would 
entertain them. The village was all astir that 
evening. As far as politeness would allow, 
there was peering from the doors, and looking 



48 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

through the bHnds, for everybody would see 
the new minister's wife ; and children, swinging 
on the gate, rushed in the back way to cry out, 
" They are coming ! " 

The minister and his bride alighted amid 
hearty welcomes, for the flock had been for a 
long while without a shepherd, and all imagined 
something of the embarrassment of a young 
man with the ink hardly dry on his parchment 
of licensure, and a girl just entering into the 
responsibility of a clergyman's wife. 

After tea, some of the parishioners came in. 
Old Mr. Bromlette stepped up to offer a greet- 
ing. He owned a large estate, had been born 
in high life, was a genuine aristocrat, and had 
in his possession silver plate which his father 
used in entertaining General Washington. He 
had no pretension or pomp of manner, but 
showed by his walk and his conversation that 
he had always moved in polite circles. He 
was a fat man, and wiped the perspiration 
from his brow — sweat started not more by his 
walk than the excitement of the occasion — 
and said, "Hot night, dominie ! " He began 
the conversation by asking the minister who 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 49 

his father was, and who his grandfather ; and 
when he found that there was in the ancestral 
hne of the minister a dignitary, seemed de- 
lighted, and said, *' I knew him well. Danced 
forty years ago with his daughter at Saratoga." 
He added, "I think we will be able to make 
you comfortable here. We have in our village 
some families of highly respectable descent. 
Here is our friend over the way; hts grand- 
father was wounded at Monmouth. He would 
have called in to-night, but he is in the city at 
a banquet given in honor of one of the Eng- 
lish lords. Let me see; what's his name?" 
At this point the door opened, and the servant 
looked in and said, '' Mr. Bromlette, your car- 
riage is waiting." " Good - night, dominie ! " 
said the old gentleman ; " I hope to see you at 
my house to - morrow. The Governor will 
dine with us, and about two o'clock my car- 
riage will call for you. You look tired. Better 
retire early. Good - night, ladies and gentle- 
men ! " 

MacMillan the Scotchman now entered into 
conversation. He was brawny and blunt. 
Looked dead in earnest. Seldom saw any- 
5 



50 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

thine to laucrh at. He was of the cast-iron 
make, and if he had cared much about family 
blood, could no doubt have traced it back to 
Drumclog or Bothwell Bridge. He said, " I 
come in to - night to welcome you as a 
minister of the New Covenant. Do not know 
much about you. What catechism did you 
stoody ? " " Westminster ! " replied the clergy- 
man. " Praise God for that ! " said the Scotch- 
man. " I think you must belong to the good 
old orthodox, out - and - out Calvinistic school. 
I must be going home, for it is nine o'clock, 
and I never allow the children to <^o to bed 
until I have sung wdth them a Psalm of David. 
Do not like to suggest, but if parfactly con- 
vain iant, give us next Sabbath a solid sermon 
about the eternal decrees. Suppose you have 
read ' McCosh on the Divine Government' 
Do not think anything surpasses that, unless it 
be * Edwards on the Will.' Good - night ! " he 
said, as he picked up his hat, which he had 
persisted in setting on the floor beside him. 
" Hope we will meet often in this world, and 
in the next ; we most certainly will if we have 
been elected. Good -night! I will stand by 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 5 1 

you as long as I find you contending earnestly 
for the faith once delivered to the saints." 
And without bowing to the rest he started 
through the hall, and began to rattle the front 
door, and shouted, " Here, somebody ! open 
this door ! Hope we shall not have as much 
trouble in getting open the door of heaven ! " 
Mrs. Durbin was present that evening. She 
was always present when pleasant words were 
to be uttered, or kind deeds done. She was 
any minister's blessing. If the pastor had a 
cough, she would come right into his house, 
only half knocking, and in the kitchen, over 
the hot stove, she would stand mixing all sorts 
of pleasant things to take. From her table 
often came in a plate of biscuit, or a bowl of 
berries already sugared. If the pulpit must 
be upholstered, she was head of the committee. 
If money was to be raised for a musical instru- 
ment, she begged it, no man saying nay, even 
if he could ill afford to contribute. Everybody 
liked her. Everybody blessed her. She step- 
ped quick ; had a laugh that was catching ; 
knew all the sick ; had her pocket full of nuts 
and picture - books. When she went through 



52 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

the poorer parts of the village, the little raga- 
muffins, white and black, would come out and 
say, " Here comes Mrs. Durbin !" 

But do not fall in love with Mrs. Durbin, for 
she was married. Her husband was a man of 
the world, took things easy, let his wife go to 
church as much as she desired, if she would 
not bother him with her religion, gave her as 
much money as she wanted, but teased her 
unmercifully about the poor urchins w^ho fol- 
lowed her in the street, and used to say, " My 
dear ! have you found out any new Lazarus ? 
I am afraid you will get the small - pox if you 
don't stop carrying victuals into those nigger 
shanties !" 

Mrs. Durbin talked rapidly that night, but 
mostly to the pastor's wife. Was overheard 
to be laying plans for a ride to the Falls. 
Hoped that the minister would not work too 
hard at the start. Told him that after he got 
rested he might go and visit a family near by 
who were greatly distressed, and wanted a 
minister to pray with them. As she rose to 
go, she said, " If you need anything at all, be 
at perfect liberty to send." Her husband 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 53 

arose at the same time. He had not said a 
word, and felt a little awkward in the presence 
of so many church -people. But he came up 
and took the minister's hand, and said, " Call 
and see us ! I am not a church - man, as you 
will soon find out. I hardly ever go to church, 
except on Thanksgiving Days, or now and 
then when the notion takes me. Still, I have 
a good horse. Anybody can drive him, and 
he is any time at your disposal. All you have 
to do is just to get In and take up the ribbons. 
My wife takes care of the religion, and I mind 
the horses. She has what our college - bred 
Joe calls the ' Suaviter in modo! and I have the 
^ Fortiter in re! Good -by! Take care of 
yourself!" 

Elder Lucas was there ; a man of fifty. 
His great characteristic was, that he never 
said anything, but always acted. Never ex- 
horted or prayed in public : only listened. 
One time at the church-meeting, called for the 
purpose of increasing the minister's salary, 
where Robert Cruikshank spoke four times in 
favor of the project, and afterward subscribed 



54 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

one dollar; Lucas was still, but subscribed 
fifty dollars. On the evening- of which we 
chiefly write, he sat silently looking at his new 
pastor. Those who thought he felt nothing 
were greatly mistaken. He was all kindness 
and love. Much of the time there were 
emotional tears in his eyes, but few saw them, 
for he had a sly habit of looking the other way 
till they dried up, or if they continued to run 
he would rub his handkerchief across his nose, 
allowing it accidentally to slip up to the corner 
of his eyes, and so nothing of emotion was 
suspected. He never offered to do anything, 
but always did it. He never promised to send 
a carriage to take his minister a riding, but 
often sent it. Never gave notice two weeks 
before of an Intended barrel of flour. But it 
was, without any warning, rolled Into the back 
entry. He did not some day in front of the 
church, in the presence of half the congrega- 
tion, tell the minister that he meant to give 
him a suit of clothes, but slyly found out who 
was the clergyman's tailor, and then by a 
former measurement had the garments made 
and sent up on Saturday night with his <.ompli- 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 55 

ments, for two weeks keeping out of the way 
for fear the minister would thank him. 

When Elder Lucas left that evening, he 
came up, and without saying a word, gave the 
minister a quick shake of the hand, and over 
forehead, cheek, and hands of the bashful man 
passed a succession of blushes. 

But the life of the little company that night 
was Harry Bronson. Probably in no other 
man was there ever compressed more vivacity 
of nature. He was a wonderful compound of 
mirthfulness and piety. Old men always took 
his hand with affection, and children ran wild 
when they saw him. On Sunday he prayed 
like a minister, but on Monday, among the 
boys, he could jump the highest, run the swift- 
est, shout the loudest, bat the truest, and turn 
somersault the easiest. Indeed, there were in 
the church two or three awful -visaged people 
who thought that Harry Bronson ought to be 
disciplined, and that sanctification was never 
accompanied by kicking up of the heels. 
They remonstrated with him, but before he got 
out of sight, and while they were yet praying 
for the good effect of their admonition, he put 



56 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

his hand on the top of the fence, and, without 
touching, leaped over, not because there was 
any need of crossing the fence, for, showing 
that he was actuated by nothing but worldHness 
and frivolity, he put his hand on the top of the 
rail and leaped back again. If there was any- 
thing funny, he was sure to see it, and had a 
way of striking attitudes, and imitating peculiar 
intonations, and walked sometimes on his toes, 
and sometimes on his heels, till one evening at 
church, one of the brethren with a religion 
made up of equal portions of sour-krout, 
mustard, and red pepper, prayed right at him, 
saying, *' If there is any brother present who 
does not walk as he should, we pray thee that 
thou wouldst do with him as thou didst with 
Sennacherib of old, and put a hook in his nose 
and turn him back !" To which prayer Harry 
Bronson responded, " Amen ! " never supposing 
that the hook was meant for his own nose. 
The reprimanding brother finding his prayer 
ineffectual, and that the Lord was unwilling to 
take Harry in his hands, resolved to attend to 
the case himself, and the second time proposed 
to undertake the work of admonition, not in 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 57 

beseeching terms as before, but with a fiery 
indignation that would either be, as he ex- 
pressed it, a savor of life unto life, or of death 
unto death. But entering Harry Bronson's 
house that evening, he found him on his hands 
and knees playing "Bear" with his children, 
and cutting such a ludicrous figure, that the 
lachrymose Elder for once lost his gravity, and 
joined in the merriment with such a full gush 
of laughter that he did not feel it would be 
consistent to undertake his mission, since the 
facetious Harry might turn on him and say, 
"Physician! heal thyself!" 

That night at the minister's welcome Harry 
was in full glee. The first grasp he gave oa 
entering the room, and the words of greeting 
that he offered, and the whole-souled, intense 
manner with which he confronted the young 
clergyman, showed him to be one of those 
earnest, active, intelligent, loving and lovable 
Christian men, who is a treasure to any pastor. 

He had a story for every turn of the even- 
ing's entertainment, and took all the spare 
room in the parlor to tell it. The gravest men 
in the party would take a joke from him. 



58 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

When MacMillan asked the minister about 
his choice of catechism, Harry ventured the 
opinion that he thought "Brown's Shorter" 
good enough for anybody. " Ah ! " said 
MacMillan, '* Harry, you rogue, stop that 
joking!" When Mr. Bromlette offered his 
carriage, Bronson offered to loan a wheel- 
barrow. He asked Mrs. Durbin if she wanted 
any more combs or castile soap for her mission 
on Dirt Alley. He almost drew into conver- 
sation the silent Mr. Lucas, asking a strange 
question, and because Lucas, through embar- 
rassment, made no response, saying, " Silence 
gives consent ! " Was full of narratives about 
weddings, and general trainings, and parish - 
meetings. Stayed till all the rest were gone, 
for he never was talked out. 

"Well, well!" said two of the party that 
night as they shut the front door ; " we will 
have to tell Harry Bronson to serve God in 
his own way." I guess there may sometimes 
be as much religion in laughing as in crying. 
We cannot make such a man as that keep step 
to a " Dead March." I think the dew of grace 
may fall just as certainly on a grotesque cactus 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 59 

as a precise primrose. Indeed, the jubilant 
palm-tree bears fruit, while the weeping-willow 
throws its worthless catkins Into the brook. 

The first Sunday came. The congregation 
gathered early. The brown-stone church was 
a beautiful structure, within and without. An 
adjacent quarry had furnished the material, 
and the architect and builder, who were men 
of taste, had not been Interfered with. A few 
creeping vines had been planted at the front 
and side, and a white rose-bush stood at the 
door, flinging its fragrance across the yard. 
Many had gone in and taken their seats, but 
others had stayed at the door to watch the 
coming of the new minister and his bride. 
She is gone now, and it Is no flattery to write 
that she was fair to look upon, delicate in struc- 
ture of body, eye large and blue, hair in which 
was folded the shadows of midnieht, erect car- 
rlage, but quite small. She was such a one as 
you could pick up and carry over a stream 
with one arm. She had a sweet voice, and had 
stood several years In the choir of the city 
churches, and had withal a magic of presence 



6o MINISTERS' SUNSHINE, 

that had turned all whom she ever met Into 
warm personal admirers. Her hand trembled 
on her husband's arm as that day they went 
up the steps of the meeting-house, gazed at 
intently by young and old. The pastor looked 
paler even than was his wont. His voice 
quavered in reading the hymn, and he looked 
confused In making the publications. That 
day, a mother had brought her child for bap- 
tism, and for the first time he officiated in that 
ceremony. Had hard work to remember the 
words, and knev/ not what to do next. When 
he came to preach, In his excitement he could 
not find his sermon. It had fallen back of the 
sofa. Looked up and down, and forward and 
backward. Fished it out at last, just In time 
to come up, flushed and hot, to read the text. 
Made a very feeble attempt at preaching. But 
all were ready to hear his words. The young 
sympathized with him, for he was young. And 
the old looked on him with a sort of paternal 
indulo-ence. At the few words in which he 
commended himself and his to their sympathy 
and care, they broke forth into weeping. And 
at the foot of the pulpit, at the close of service, 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 6l 

the people gathered, poor and rich, to offer 
their right hand. 

MacMillan the Scotchman said, "Young 
man ! that 's the right doctrine ; the same that 
Dr. Duncan taught me forty years ago at the 
kirk in the glen!" Mr. Bromlette came up, 
and introduced to the young minister a young 
man who was a baronet, and a lady who was 
by marriage somehow related to the Astors. 
Harry Bronson took his pastor by the hand, 
and said, " That sermon went right to the spot. 
Glad you found it. Was afraid you would 
never fish it out from behind that sofa. When 
I saw you on all-fours, looking it up, thought I 
should burst." Lucas, with his eyes red as a 
half-hour of crying could make them, took the 
minister's hand, but said nothing, only looked 
more thanks and kindness than words could 
have expressed. Mr. Durbin said, " How are 
you? Broke in on my rule to-day and came 
to church. Little curious, you see. Did not 
believe it quite all, but that will do. Glad you 
gave it to those Christians. Saw them wince 
under it ! " Mrs. Durbin was meanwhile em- 
ployed in introducing the bride to the people 



62 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

at the door who were a little backward. Beg- 
ged them to come up. Drew up an array of 
four or five children that she had clothed and 
brought out of the shanties to attend church. 
Said, "This is Bridget Maloy, and that Ellen 
Haggerty. Good girls they are, too, and like 
to come to church!" 

For a long while the hand -shakings con- 
tinued, and some who could not get confidence 
even to wait at the door, stretched their hands 
out from the covered wagon, and gave a 
pleasant "How do you do?" or "God bless 
you," till the minister and his wife agreed 
that their happiness was full, and went home, 
saying, "This, indeed, is Ministers' Sun- 
shine ! " 

The parsonage was only a little distance off, 
but the pastor had nothing with which to 
furnish it. The orass was lonor and needed 
to be cut, and the weeds were covering the 
garden. On Monday morning the pastor and 
his wife were saying what a pity it was that 
they were not able to take Immediate posses- 
sion. They could be so happy in such a coiiy 
place. Never mind. They would out of tlie 



MINIS TERS' S UN SHINE. 6l 

first year's salary save enough to warrant going 
to housekeeping. 

That afternoon the sewing - society met. 
That society never disgraced itself with gossip. 
They were good women, and met together, 
sometimes to sew for the destitute of the vil- 
lage, and sometimes to send garments to the 
suffering home missionaries. For two hours 
their needles would fly, and then off for home, 
better for their philanthropic labors. But that 
afternoon the ladies stood round the room in 
knots, a - whispering. Could it be that the 
society was losing its good name, and was be- 
coming a school of scandal ? That could not 
be, for Mrs. Durbin seemed the most active in 
the company, and Mrs. Durbin was always 
right. 

Next morning, while the minister and his 
wife were talking over this secrecy of conver- 
sation at the sewing - circle, Harry Bronson 
came in and asked the young pastor if he was 
not weary with last Sunday's work. He 
answered, " No ! " " Well," suggested Harry, 
•* I think you had better take a few days' rest 
anyhow. Go off and see your friends. My 



64 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

carriage will, in about an hour, go to the cars, 
and I will meet you on Saturday night. Think 
it will do you both good.'* 

"Well, well!" said the minister, while aside 
consulting with his wife, " what does this mean ? 
Are they tired of us so soon ? Is this any 
result of yesterday's whispering? But they 
make the suggestion, and I shall take it." So 
that Tuesday evening found them walking the 
streets of the neighboring city, wondering what 
all this meant. Saturday came, and on the 
arrival of the afternoon train Harr^' Bronson 
was ready to meet the young parson and his 
wife. They rode up to the place of their pre- 
vious entertainment. After tea, Bronson said, 
" We have been making a little alteration at 
the parsonage since you were gone." " Have 
you ? " exclaimed the minister. " Come ! my 
dear ! let us go up and see ! " As they passed 
up the steps of the old parsonage, the roses 
and the lilacs on either side swung in the even- 
ing air. The river in front glowed under the 
long row of willows, and parties of villagers in 
white passed by in the rocking -boat, singing 
" Life on the ocean wave," It was just before 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 6$ 

sunset, and what with the perfume, and the 
roseate clouds, and the rusding of the maples, 
and the romance of a thousand dawning ex- 
pectations — it was an evening never to be for- 
gotten. Its flowers will never close. Its clouds 
will never melt. Its waters will never lose 
their sheen. Its aroma will never float away. 

The key was thrust into the door and It 
swung open. " What does this mean ? " they 
both cried out at the same time. "Who put 
down this carpet, and set here these chairs, and 
hung this hall-lamp ?" They stood as if trans- 
fix; ed. It was no shabby carpet, but one that 
showed that many dollars had been expended, 
and much taste employed, and much effort 
ejerted. They opened the parlor -door, and 
th'sre they all stood — sofa, and whatnot, and 
chair, and stand, and mantel- ornament, and 
picture. They went up stairs, and every room 
was furnished ; beds with beautiful white coun- 
terpanes, and vases filled with flowers, and walls 
hung with engravings. Everything complete. 

These surprised people came down stairs to 
the pantry. Found boxes of sugar, bags of 
salt, cans of preserves, packages of spices, 
6* 



66 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

bins of flour, loaves of bread. Went to the 
basement, and found pails, baskets, dippers, 
cups, saucers, plates, forks, knives, spoons, 
strainers, bowls, pitchers, tubs, and a huge 
stove filled with fuel, and a lucifer-match lying 
on the lid ; so that all the young married pair 
would have to do in going to housekeeping, 
w^ould be to strike the match and apply it to 
the shavings. In the study, adorned with 
lounge and flowers, and on table, covered with 
bright green baize, lay an envelope enclosing 
a card, on which was written, " Please accept 
from a few friends." 

Had Aladdin been around with his lamp ? 
Was this a vision such as comes to one about 
half awake on a sunshiny morning ? They sat 
down, weak and tearful from surprise, thanked 
God, blessed Mrs. Durbin, knew that Mr. 
Bromlette's purse had been busy, felt that silent 
Mr. Lucas had at last spoken, realized that 
Harry Bronson had been perpetrating a prac- 
tical joke, were certain that MacMillan had at 
last been brought to believe a little in " works," 
and exclaimed, "Verily, this is Ministers' Sun- 
shine ! " and as the slanting rays of the setting 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE, 6/ 

day struck the porcelain pitcher, and printed 
another figure on the carpet, and threw its gold 
on the cushion of the easy-chair, It seemed as 
If everything within, and everything around, 
and everything above, responded, " Ministers' 
Sunshine!" 

The fact was, that during the absence of the 
new pastor that week, the whole village had 
been topsy-turvy with excitement. People 
standing together in knots, others running In 
and out of doors ; the hunting up of measuring- 
rods ; the running around of committees with 
everything to do, and so little time In which to 
do It. Somebody had proposed a very cheap 
furnishing of the house, but Mr. Bromlette 
said : " This will never do. How can we pros- 
per. If, living in fine houses ourselves, we let 
our minister go half cared for? The sheep 
shall not be better off than the shepherd ! " and 
down went his name on the subscription with 
a liberal sum. 

MacMillan said, " I am In favor of taking 
care of the Lord's anointed. And this young 
minister of the everlasting gospel hinted that 
he believed In the perseverance of the saints, 



6? MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

and other cardinal doctrines, and you may put 
me down for so much, and that is twice what 
I can afford to give, but we must have faith, 
and make sacrifices for the kingdom of God's 
sake." 

While others had this suggestion about the 
window - shades, and that one a preference 
about the figure of the carpets, and another 
one said he would have nothing to do with it 
unless it were thus and so, quiet Mr. Lucas 
said nothing, and some of the people feared 
he would not help in the enterprise. But when 
the subscription - paper was handed him, he 
looked it over, and thought for a minute or 
two, and then set down a sum that was about 
twice as much as any of the other contributions. 
Worldly Mr. Durbin said at the start: "I will 
give nothing. There is no use of making such 
a fuss over a minister. You will spoil him at 
the start. Let him fight his own way up, as 
the rest of us have had to do. Delia ! (that 
was his wife's name,) nobody furnished our 
house when we started." But Mrs. Durbin, as 
was expected, stood in the front of the enter- 
prise. If there was a stingy fellow to be ap- 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE, 69 

proached, she was sent to get the money out 
of him, and always succeeded. She had been 
so used to begging for the poor of the back 
street, that when any of the farmers found her 
coming up the lane, they would shout, ''Well, 
Mrs. Durbin, how much will satisfy you to- 
day ? " She was on the committee that selected 
the carpets. While others were waiting for 
the men to come and hang up the window- 
shades, she mounted a table and hung four of 
them. Some of the hardest workers in the 
undertaking were ready to do anything but 
tack down carpets. " Well," she said, " that is 
just what I am willing to do ; " and so down she 
went pulling until red in the face to make the 
breadths match, and pounding her finger till 
the blood started under the nail, in trying to 
make a crooked tack do its duty. One even- 
ing her husband drove up in front of the 
parsonage with a handsome book -case. Said 
he had come across it, and had bought it to 
please his wife, not because he approved of all 
this fuss over a minister, who might turn out 
well, and might not. The next morning there 
came three tons of coal that he had ordered to 



70 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

btr put in the cellar of the parsonage. And 
though Durbin never acknowledged to his wife 
any satisfaction in the movement, he every 
night asked all about how affairs were getting 
on, and it was found at last that he had been 
amone the most liberal. 

Harry Bronson had been all around during 
the week. He had a cheerful word for every 
perplexity. Put his hand deep down in his 
own pocket. Cracked jokes over the cracked 
crockery. Sent up some pictures, such as 
-The Sleigh-riding Party," " Ball Playing," and 
" Boys Coasting." Knocked off Lucas's hat, 
and pretended to know nothing about it. Slip- 
ped on purpose, and tumbled into the lap of 
the committee. Went up stairs three steps at 
a time, and came down astride the banisters. 
At his antics some smiled, some smirked, some 
tittered, some chuckled, some laughed through 
the nose, some shouted outright, and all that 
week Harry Bronson kept the parsonage roar- 
ing with laughter. Yet once in a while you 
would find him seated in the corner, talking 
with some old mother in Israel, who was tellino 
him all her griefs, and he offering the consola- 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 7 1 

tlons of religion. "Just look at Bronson!" 
said some one. " What a strange conglomera- 
tion ! There he is crying with that old lady in 
a corner. You would not think he had ever 
smiled. This truly is weeping with those who 
weep, and laughing with those who laugh. 
Bronson seems to carry in his heart all the joys 
and griefs of this village." 

It was five o'clock of Saturday afternoon, 
one hour before the minister was expected, 
that the work was completed, entry swept out, 
the pieces of string picked up, shades drawn 
down, and the door of the parsonage locked. 
As these church-workers went down the street, 
their backs ached, and their fingers were sore, 
but their hearts were light, and their counte- 
nances happy, and every step of the way from 
the parsonage door to their own gate they saw 
scattered on the gravelled sidewalk, and yard- 
grass, and door-step, broad flecks of Ministers* 
Sunshine ! 

But two or three days had passed, and the 
young married couple took possession of their 
new house. It was afternoon, and the tea- 
table was to be spread for the first time. It 



72 MINISTERS* SUN'S HI NE. 

seemed as if every garden in the village had 
sent its greeting to that tea-table. Bouquets 
from one, and strawberries from another, and 
radishes, and bread, and cake, and grass-butter 
with figure of wheat-sheaf printed on it. The 
silver all new, that which the committee had 
left added to the bridal presents. Only two 
sat at the table, yet the room seemed crowded 
with emotions, such as attend only upon the 
first meal of a newly married couple, when 
beginning to keep house. The past sent up to 
that table a thousand tender memories, and the 
future hovered with wings of amber and gold. 
That bread-breaking partook somewhat of the 
solemnity of a sacrament. There was little 
talk and much silence. They lingered long at 
the table, spoke of the crowning of so many 
anticipations, and laid out plans for the great 
future. The sun had not yet set. The castor 
glistened in it. The glasses glowed in the red 
light. It gave a roseate tinge to the knives, 
and trembled across the cake - basket, as the 
leaves at the window fluttered in the evening 
air ; and the twain continued to sit there, until 
the sun had dropped to the very verge of the 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 73 

horizon, and with nothing to intercept its blaze, 
it poured in the open windows, till from ceiling 
to floor and from wall to wall the room was 
flooded with Ministers' Sunshine. 

A year passed on, and the first cloud hovered 
over the parsonage. It was a very dark cloud. 
It filled the air, and with its long black folds 
seemed to sweep the eaves of the parsonage. 
Yet it parted, and through it fell as bright a 
light as ever gilded a hearthstone. The next 
day all sorts of packages arrived ; little socks, 
with a verse of poetry stuck in each one of 
them — socks about large enough for a small 
kitten ; and a comb with which you might 
imaofine Tom Thumb's wife would comb his 
hair for him. Mrs. Durbin was there — indeed 
had been there for the last twenty- four hours. 
Mr. Bromlette sent up his coachman to make 
inquiries. MacMillan called to express his 
hope that it was a child of the " Covenant." 
Lucas came up the door-step to offer his con- 
gratulation, but had not courage to rattle the 
knocker, and so went away, but stopped at the 
store to order up a box of farina. Harry 
Bronson smiled all the way to the parsonage, 
7 



74 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

and smiled all the way back. Meanwhile the 
light within the house every moment grew 
brighter. The parson hardly dared to touch 
the little delicate thinof for fear he would break 
it ; and walked around with it upon a pillow, 
wondering what it would do next, starting at 
every sneeze or zry, for fear he had done some 
irreparable damage ; wondering if its foot was 
set on right, and if with that peculiar formation 
of the head it would ever know anything, and 
if infantile eyes always looked like those. The 
wonder grew, till one day Durbin, out of re- 
gard for his wife, was invited to see the little 
stranger, when he declared he had during his 
life seen fifty just like it, and said, *' Do you 
think that worth raising, eh ? " 

All came to see it, and just wanted to feel 
the weio-ht of it. The little o-irls of the neieh- 
borhood must take off its socks to examine the 
dimples on its fat feet. And, although not old 
enough to appreciate it, there came directed to 
the baby, rings and rattles, and pins, and brace- 
lets, and gold pieces with a string through, to 
hang about the neck, and spoons for pap, and 
things the use of which the parson could not 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 75 

imaeine. The ladies said it looked like its 
father, and the gentlemen exclaimed, " How 
much it resembles its mother ' " All sorts of 
names were proposed, some from novels, and 
some from Scripture. MacMillan thought it 
ouorht to be called Deborah or Patience. Mr. 
Bromlette wished it called Eugenia Van Court- 
landt. Mrs. Durbin thought it would be nice 
to name it Grace. Harry Bronson thought it 
might be styled Humpsy Dumpsy. A young 
gentleman suggested Felicia, and a young lady 
thought it might be Angelina. When Lucas 
was asked what he had to propose, he blushed, 
and after a somewhat protracted silence, 
answered, " Call it what you like. . Please 
yourselves and you please me." All of the 
names were tried in turn, but none of them 
were good enough. So a temporary name 
must be selected, one that might do till the day 
of the christening. The first day the pet was 
carried out was a very bright day, the sun was 
high up, and as the neighbors rushed out to 
the nurse, and lifted the veil that kept off the 
glare of the light, they all thought it well to 
call it the Ministers' Sunshine. 



76 MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 

And so the days and the months and the 
years flew by. If a cloud came up, as on the 
day mentioned, there was a Hand behind it to 
lift the heavy folds. If there were a storm, it 
only made the shrubs sweeter, and the fields 
greener. If a winter night was filled with rain 
and tempest, the next morning all the trees 
stood up in burnished mail of ice, casting their 
crowns at the feet of the sun, and surrendering 
their gleaming swords to the conqueror. If 
the trees lost their blossoms, it was to put on 
the mellowness of fruit; and when the fruit 
was scattered, autumnal glories set up in the 
tops their flaming torches. And when the 
leaves fell it was only through death to come 
singing in the next spring - time, when the 
mellow horn of the south - wind sounded the 
resurrection. If in the chill April a snow-bank 
lingered in the yard, they were apt to find a 
crocus at the foot of it. If an early frost 
touched the corn, that same frost unlocked the 
burr of the chestnut, and poured richer blood 
into the veins of the Catawba. When the 
moon set, the stars came out to worship, and 



MINISTERS' SUNSHINE. 7/ 

counted their golden beads in the Cathedral of 
the Infinite. 

On the petunias that all over the knoll shed 
their blood for the glory of the garden ; on the 
honeysuckle where birds rested, and from which 
fountains of odor tossed their spray; on the 
river, where by day the barge floated, and by 
night the moon - tipped oars came up tangled 
with the tinkling jewels of the deep ; at even- 
tide In the garden, where God walked in the 
cool of the day ; by the minister's hearth, where 
the child watched the fall of the embers, and 
congenial spirits talked, and ministering angels 
hovered, and in the sounds of the night -fall 
there floated the voices of bright immortals, 
bidding the two, " Come up higher ! " — there 
was calm, clear, Ministers' Sunshine ! 



7* 






OUR FIRST BOOTS. 

IE have seen many days of joy, but 
we remember no such exhilarations 
as that felt by us on the day when 
we mounted our first pair of boots. To ap- 
preciate such an era in life, we must needs 
have been brought up in the country. Boys 
in town come to this crisis before they can ap- 
preciate the height and depth of such an ac- 
quisition. The boot period is the dividing line 
between babyhood and boyhood. Before the 
boots, one Is trampled upon by comrades, and 
stuck with pins, and we walk with an air of 
apology for the fact that we were born at all. 
Robust school - fellows strike us across the 
cheek, and when we turn toward them, they cry, 
''Who are you looking at? " or what Is worse 
than any possible insult, we have somebody 

78 



UR FIR ST B DOTS. 79 

chuck US under the chin, and call us " Bub." 
Before the crisis of boots, the country boy 
carries no handkerchief. This keeps him in a 
state of constant humiliation. Whatever crisis 
may come in the boy's history — no handker- 
chief. This is the very unpopular period of 
snuffles. 

But at last the age of boots dawns upon a 
boy. Henceforth, instead of always having to 
get out of the way, he will make others get 
out of his way. He will sometimes get the 
Scripture lesson confused, and when smitten 
on the right cheek, will turn and give it to his 
opponent on the left cheek also. Indeed, we 
do not think there is any regulation, human or 
divine, demanding that a boy submit to the 
school-bully. I think we should teach our boy 
to avoid all quarrel and strife ; but, neverthe- 
less, to take care of himself. We remember 
with deep satisfaction how that, after Jim John- 
son had knocked our hat in the mud, and spit 
in our face, and torn our new coat, we felt 
called upon to vindicate the majesty of our 
new boots. That, however, was before we had 
any idea of ever becoming a minister. But 



8o OUR FIRST BOOTS. 

when the time spoken of In a boy's life comes, 
look out how you call him " Bub." He parts 
his hair on the side, has the end of his white 
handkerchief sticking out at the top of his 
side-pocket as if it were accidentally arranged 
so, has a dignified and manly mode of expec- 
toration, and walks down the road with long 
strides, as much as to say : " Clear the track 
for my boots ! " 

We have seen imposing men, but none have 
so thoroughly impressed us as the shoemaker, 
who, with waxy hand, delivered into our pos- 
session our first pedal adornments. As he 
put the awl through the leather, and then in- 
serted the two bristles into the hole, and drew 
them through it, and then, bending over the 
lapstone, grasped the threads with hard grip, 
and brought them up with a jerk that made 
the shop shake, we said to ourself : " Here is 
gracefulness for you, and power ! " 

It was Sabbath-day when we broke them in. 
Oh ! the rapture of that moment when we lay 
hold the straps at one end, and, with our big 
brother pushing at the other, the boot went on ! 
We fear that we got but little advantage that 



OUR FIRST BOOTS. 8l 

day from the services. All the pulpit admoni- 
tion about worldliness and pride struck the toe 
of our boots, and fell back. We trampled un- 
der our feet all good counsels. We have to 
repent that, while some trust in horses and 
some in chariots, we put too much stress upon 
leather. Though our purchase was so tight in 
the instep that, as soon as we got to the woods, 
we went limping on our way — what boots it? 
We felt that in such a cause it was noble to 
suffer. 

For some reason, boots are not what they 
used to be. You pay a big price, and you 
might walk all day without hearing once from 
them ; but the original pair of which I tell, 
spake out for themselves. No one doubted 
whether you had been to church after you had 
once walked up the aisle in company with such 
leather. It was the pure eloquence of calfskin. 

We have seen hunting- boots, and fishing- 
boots, and jack -boots, American boots, and 
French boots ; but we despair of finding any 
thing to equal our first pair, which had the 
brightest gloss, the finest heels, and the merri- 
est squeak. Alas ! they are gone ! And so is 



82 OUR FIRST BOOTS. 

the artist who fashioned them. He has laid 
down his awl. Moons shall wax for him no 
more. He has done forever with pegs. But 
we shall always remember how he looked one 
Saturday afternoon, when, the sunflowers in 
the yard, and the cat on the window-sill, he set 
upon his counter our first pair of boots. For 
his sake, may there be peace to all departed 
shoemakers ! May they go straight to St. 
Crispin, that Roman artist in leather, remark- 
able for the fact that when he declared that a 
pair of shoes should be done by Saturday 
night, he always kept his promise. 





^ 



IN STIRRUPS. 




UFF! puff!" goes the locomotive, and 
the passengers for Mount Washing- 
ton are set down at the " Tip - Top 
House." So all the romance of climbing is 
gone. We shall yet visit the Holy Land with 
the " Owl Train." Who knows but the water 
of the Helicon may yet be made to turn a fac- 
tory of shoe -pegs? Bucephalus would be a 
plain horse on Central Park, and Throckmor- 
ton's pointer, of history, is nothing, compared 
with our dog, sharp at the nose, thin at the 
flanks, long in the limb, and able to snuff up 
the track of the reindeer three miles away. 
We tell a story of olden times — that is, of 
three years ago, for the world no longer con- 
tents itself to turn once a day on its axis, but 
makes fifty revolutions a minute. 

83 



84 I^ STIRRUPS. 

The breakfast hour of the Crawford House, 
at the White Mountains, is past, and word is 
sounded through all the halls of the hotel 
that those who desire to ascend Mount Wash- 
ington must appear on the piazza. Thither we 
come, though an August morning, in midwinter 
apparel. The ladies, who the evening before 
had lighted up the parlors with the flash of 
diamonds, now appear in rough apparel, much 
of which has been hired from the porter of the 
hotel, who sticks out his sign of hats, coats, and 
skirts to let. A lady, minus hoops, minus 
laces, minus jewelry, plus a shaggy jacket, 
plus boots, plus a blanket, equals a lady 
equipped for the ascent of Mount Wash- 
ington. 

The horses came, unled, out of their stables, 
each one answering to his name — "Spot," 
"White Stocking," and "Bouncer." They 
were peculiar horses, unlike those you are 
accustomed to mount, their sides, their knees, 
and their fedocks having the mark of the 
mountains. They had clambered terrible 
heights, and been cut again and again by the 
rocks. Not bit- champing horses, thunder- 



IN STIRRUPS. 85 

necked, but steady, serious, patient, the gloom 
of shadow and precipice in their eyes, a sHght 
stoop in their gait, as though accustomed to 
move cautiously along places where it would 
be perilous to walk upright. We helped the 
ladies into the saddle, though we were all the 
time afflicted with the uncertainty as to whom 
we were helping, and not knowing whether the 
foot we put into the stirrup belonged to a 
Fifth-Avenue belle or one not accustomed to 
such polite attentions. 

Thirty-five in all, we moved up the bridle- 
path, through the woods, a band of musicians 
playing a lively air. With what exhilaration 
we started we will not attempt to tell, for we 
were already at great altitudes, and had looked 
on the Kearsarge, and the Chocorua, and felt 
the stroke of those emotions that slide from 
the stupendous bowlders of the Willie peaks 
when one first gazes upon them. 

" General Scott," considered the safest horse 

in all the mountains, began his upward career 

that morning by brushing off against a tree 

his fair rider.* He did not seem sorry a bit, but 

looked round to me with a wink, as much as to 
8 



86 IN STIRRUPS. 

say, " I do not like to wear belles In the sum- 
mertime ; " and, while I stood shocked at the 
poverty of the pun, he seemed hardly able to 
keep from breaking into a horse-laugh. 

Orders pass along the line : " Bear hard in 
the stirrup ! " or, " Hold fast the pommel of the 
saddle ! " Up a corduroy path we mounted, 
and wedged ourselves through narrow defiles, 
and height after height sank beneath ; and the 
hoofs of the horse before us clattered close by 
the ears of our own trusty beast, that bore 
bravely on, though the white legs that gave to 
him the name of White Stocking were already 
striped with blood struck out by the sharp 
edges of the first mountain. 

After a while the guides commanded us 
to halt. We were coming to more exciting 
experiences. The horses' girths were taken 
up another hole into the buckle, and their 
shoes examined. Aeain we fall into line. The 
guide takes his position by a plunge of rocks, 
so as to steady and encourage horses and 
riders. The ponies halt at the verge, look 
down, measure the distances, and examine the 
places for a foothold. 



IN STIRRUPS. Sy 

" Steady ! " shouts the guide. '* Steady ! " 
cry the riders, and down the rocks you go, now 
with a leap, now with a sHde, now with a head- 
long stumble against which you jerk up the 
reins with all your might, the horse recovering 
himself, and stopping midway the declivity for 
another look before a deeper plunge, until, all 
panting and a-tremble with the exertion, he 
stops to rest a moment at the foot of the rocks, 
and you turn round, put your hand on your 
pony's back, and watch others poised for the 
same leap. 

Two hours more, and we have left vegeta- 
tion behind us. Mountain-ash, and birch, and 
maple, which we saw soon after starting, cannot 
climb such steeps as these. Yes, we have come 
v/here spruce, and fir, and white pine begin to 
faint by the way, and in every direction you 
see the stark remains of the trees which have 
been bitten to death by the sharp white teeth 
of the frost. Yet God does not forsake even 
the highest peaks. The majesty of forests 
may be denied them, but the brow of this stu- 
pendous death hath Its wreath of alpine plants. 



88 IN STIRRUPS, 

and its catafalque Is strewn with bluebells and 
anemones. 

After passing great reaches of desolation, 
you suddenly come upon a height garnished 
with a foam of white flowers dashed up from 
the sea of divine beauty. There, where neither 
hoof nor wheel can be traced, you find the 
track of God's foot in the turf; and on the 
granite, great natural laws written on " tables 
of stone," hurled down and broken by the 
wrath of the tempest. Oh ! how easy to see 
that the Divine care is here tending the white 
flocks of flowers which pick out their pasturage 
among the clefts. 

We are now in the region of driving mist, 
and storm, and hurricane. The wind searches 
to the bone, and puts a red blossom on the 
soberest nose. It occurred to us that this must 
be the nest where all winds and storms of the 
country are hatched out, under the brooding 
wing and the Iron beak of this great Mount 
Washington blast. The rain drips from the 
rim of our hats. Through the driving mist the 
advancing cavalcade look weird and spectral. 
Those coming behind and beneath you, seem 



IN STIRRUPS. 89 

like ghosts travelling up from some nether 
world, and those before and above, as though 
horsed on the wind. 

Five of the party long ago turned back, 
overcome by cold, and fatigue, and fright, and, 
accompanied by one of the guides, are by this 
time safely housed. The rest are still advan- 
cing, and the guide with his long staff urges on 
the ponies. We are told that we are at the 
foot of the last steep. We cannot restrain our 
glee. We shout and laugh. The dullest man 
of all actually attempts a witticism. Our blood 
tingles ! Hurrah for Mount Washington ! We 
talk to persons that we never knew as though 
they were old acquaintances. We praise our 
horse. We feel like passing over our right 
hand to our left and congratulating ourselves. 
Deacons, ministers, and the gravest of the 
grave, sing snatches of" John Brown," " Yankee 
Doodle," and the " Girl I left behind me." 

Our dignity loses its balance and falls off, 
and rolls down the side of the mountain, six 
thousand two hundred and eighty-five feet, so 
that the probability is that it will never again 
be recovered. We drive into the pen of rocks, 

8* 



90 IN STIRRUPS. 

and as the party start on foot for the Tip -top 
House a few rods off, we give one long, loud 
halloo, and the storms answer. 

Having entered the house, we threw off our 
coats. We gathered around the red - hot 
stoves. Some sat down exhausted ; others 
were hysterical from the excitement. Strong 
men needed to be resuscitated ; but by the 
time the dinner-bell sounded, the whole party 
were sufficiently revived to surround the 
tables. 

It is astonishing with what force the" cork of 
a champagne bottle will fly out. Two of the 
company were knocked over by one of these 
corks, and one of the two afterward fell from 
his horse and went rolling down the mountain. 
Elegant gentleman he was before the cork 
struck him, and had an elegant overcoat which 
he put up in a bet and lost, and would have 
been obliged to descend the mountain in a 
shivering condition (but for the guide who lent 
him a coat), through a hailstorm in which our 
horses stopped, and turned their backs, and 
refused to go till goaded on by the guides. 
With this exception the dining hour was not 



IN STIRRUPS. 91 

marred. But while we were abundantly sup- 
plied, alas, for " White Stocking," " Spot," and 
" Bouncer." They stood in a roofless pen. 
Mountain horses have a hard life. Did we not 
pride ourselves on our orthodoxy, we would 
express the hope that these suffering beasts, 
so much wronged on earth, may have a future 
life, where, unharnessed and unwhipped, they 
may range in high, thick, luxuriant pasture 
forever and ever. 






GOOD CHEER. 

UR disposition is much of our own 

making. We admit there is great 

difference in natural constitutions. 

Some persons are born cross. See that man 

with a long face that never shortens into a 

laugh ! Tell me, did not his mother have 

trouble with him when he was small ? Why, 

he never was pleased. Did he not make riots 

in the nursery among looking-glasses and glass 

pitchers ? Was his nurse ever able on her 

knee to jolt down his petulance, or shake up 

his good - humor ? Did he not often hold an 

indignation meeting flat on the floor — his 

hands, his head, and his feet all participating 

in the exercises ? Could not his father tell you 

a story of twelve o'clock at night, with hasty 

92 



^ GOOD CHEER. 93 

toilet, walking the floor with the dear little 
blessing in his arms ? A story that would be 
a caution to old bachelors. 

Some are from infancy light and happy — 
they romp, they fly. You can hear their swift 
feet in the hall. Their loud laugfhter rines 
through the house, or in the woods bursts into 
a score of echoes. At night you can hardly 
hush their glad hearts for slumber, and in the 
morning they wake you with their singing. 
Alas ! if then they leave you, and you no more 
hear their swift feet in the hall, and their loud 
laughter ringing through the house, or in the 
woods bursting into a score of echoes ; if they 
wake you no more in the morning with their 
sweet song ; if the color go out of the rose 
and its leaves fall ; if angels for once grow 
jealous, and want what you cannot spare ; if 
packed away in the trunk or drawer there be 
silent garments that once fluttered with youth- 
ful life, and by mistake you call some other 
child by the name of the one departed — ah 
me ! ah me ! 

But while we may all from our childhood 
have a certain bent given to our disposition, 



94 GOOD CHEER. 

much depends upon ourselves whedier we will 
be happy or miserable. 

You will see In die world chiefly diat for 
which you look. A farmer going through the 
country chiefly examines the farms, an architect 
the buildings, a merchant the condition of the 
markets, a minister the churches ; and so a 
man going through. the world will see the most 
of that for which he especially looks. He who 
Is constantly watching for troubles will find 
them stretching off Into gloomy wildernesses, 
while he who Is watchlnof for blessinors will find 
them hither and thither extending in harvests 
of luxuriance. 

Like most garments, like most carpets, every- 
thing In life has a right side and a wrong side. 
You can take any joy, and by turning It around, 
find troubles on the other side ; or you may 
take the greatest trouble, and by turning it 
around, find joys on the other side. The 
gloomiest mountain never casts a shadow on 
both sides at once, nor does the greatest of 
life's calamities. The earth in its revolutions 
manaores about rio-ht — it never has darkness 

o o 

all over at the same time. Sometimes it has 



GOOD CHEER. 95 

night In America, and sometimes In China, but 
there Is some part of the earth constantly In 
the bright sunHght. My friends, do as the 
earth does. When you have trouble, keep 
turning round, and you will find sunlight some- 
where. Amid the thickest eloom throuo-h 
which you are called to pass, carry your own 
candle. A consummate fret will. In almost 
every Instance, come to nothing. You will not 
go to such a merchant's store, nor employ such 
a mechanic, nor call such a minister. 

Fretfulness will kill anything that Is not In 
its nature Immortal. There is a large class 
of persons In constant trouble about their 
health, although the same amount of strength 
in a cheerful man would be taken as healthi- 
ness. Their digestion, being constantly sus- 
pected of unfaithfulness, finally refuses to serve 
such a master, and says, " Hereafter make way 
with your own lobsters ! " and the suspected 
lungs resign their office, saying : " Hereafter, 
blow your own bellows ! " For the last twenty 
years he has been expecting every moment to 
faint. His nerves make Insurrection, and rise 
up against his head, saying : " Come ! let us 



96 GOOD CHEER. 

seize upon this armory ! " His face is per- 
petually drawn, as though he either had a pain 
or expected one. 

You fear to accost him with, " How are you 
to-day?" for that would be the signal for a 
shower of complaints. He is always getting a 
lump on his side, an enlargement of the heart, 
or a curve in the spine. If some of these dis- 
orders did not actually come, he would be sick 
of disappointment. If you should find his 
memorandum - book, you would discover in it 
recipes, in elderly female handwriting, for the 
cure of all styles of diseases, from softening of 
the brain in a man, down to the bots in a horse. 
His bedroom -shelf is an apothecary -infantum, 
where medicines of all kinds may be found, 
from larcre bottles full of head- wash for diseased 
craniums, down to the smallest vial, full of the 
best preparations for the removing of corns 
from the feet. Thousands of men are being 
destroyed by this constant suspicion of their 
health. 

Others settle down into a gloomy state from 
forebodings of trouble to come. They do not 
know why it is, but they are always expecting 



GOOD CHEER. 97 

that something will happen. They imagine 
about one presentiment a week. A bird flies 
into the window, or a salt-cellar upsets on the 
table, or a cricket chirps on the hearth, and 
they shiver all over, and expect a messenger 
speedily to come in hot haste to the front door, 
and rush in with evil tidings. 

Away ! away with all forebodings as to the 
future. Cheer up, disconsolate ones ! Go 
forth among nature. Look up toward the 
heavens insufferably bright by day, or at night 
when the sky is merry with ten thousand stars, 
joining hands of light, with the earth in the 
ring, going round and round with gleam, and 
dance, and song, making old Night feel young 
again. Go to the forest, where the woodman's 
axe rines on the trees, and the solitude is 
broken by the call of the woodsparrow, and 
the chewink starting up from among the 
huckleberry-bushes. Go to where the streams 
leap down off the rocks, and their crystal heels 
clatter over the white pebbles. Go to where 
the wild flowers stand drinking out of the 
mountain - brook, and, scattered on the grass, 
look as if all the oreads had cast their crowns 
9 



98 GOOD CHEER. 

at the foot of the steep. Hark to the fluting 
of the winds and the long -metre psalm of the 
thunder ! Look at the Morning coming down 
the mountains, and Evening drawing aside the 
curtain from heaven's wall of jasper, amethyst, 
sardonyx, and chalcedony ! Look at all this, 
and then be happy. 





p^- -^ ^^ 



^v^^ 



K Ol.n 1. OCK. 




THE OLD CLOCK. 




OING ! Going!" said the auctioneer. 
" Is seven dollars all I hear bid for 
this old family clock. Going ! Going ! 
Gone ! Who bought it?" We looked around, 
and found that a hard - visaged dealer in old 
furniture had become the possessor of the 
venerable time - piece. It was not like the 
clocks you turn out of a factory, fifty a day, 
unprincipled clocks that would as lief lie as 
tell the truth, and that stand on the shelf 
a-chuckle when they find that they have caused 
you to miss the train. But such a clock as 
stood in the hall of your father's house when 
you were a boy. No one ever thought of such 
a time-piece as having been manufactured, but 
took it for granted that it had been born in the 

99 



lOO THE OLD CLOCK. 

ages past, and had come on down In the family 
from eeneratlon to oreneration. 

The old clock In the auction room, which 
had been talking persistently for so long a 
time, said not a word. Its hands were before 
Its face, unable to hide Its grief. It had lost all 
its friends, and In old age had been turned out 
on the world. Its fortunes, like its weights, 
had rtm dow7i. Looking through Its glasses, It 
seemed to say : 

" Have I come to this ? I have struck the 
hours, and now they come back to strike me ! " 

It first took Its place on the old homestead 
about seventy years ago. Grandfather and 
grandmother had just been married. That 
was a part of their outfit. It called them to 
their first meal. There were the blue - edeed 
dishes, and bone - handled knives, and homely 
fare, and an appetite sharpened on the wood- 
pile, or by the snow - shovelling. As the clock 
told twelve of noon, the rugged pair, in home- 
made garments, took their position at the table, 
and keeping time to the rattle of knives, and 
forks, and spoons, the clock went Tick — lock/ 
Tick — tock ! 



THE OLD CLOCK. lOI 

There were the shining tin pans on the shelf. 
There were the woollen mittens on the stand. 
There were the unpolished rafters over head. 
There was the spinning - wheel in the corner. 
There was the hot fire, over which the apples 
baked, till they had sagged down, brown, and 
sissing hot, and the saucepan, on the hearth, 
was getting up the steam, the milk just lifting 
the lid to look out, and sputtering with passion, 
until with one sudden dash it streams into the 
fire, making the housewife rush with holder 
and tongs to the rescue. The flames leaped 
up around the back -log, and the kettle rattled 
with the steam, and jocund laughter bounded 
away, and the old clock looked on with benig- 
nant face, as much as to say : 

"Grand sport. Happy pair. Good times. 
Clocks sympathize. Tick — tock ! Tick — 
tock ! " ^ 

One day, at a vendue, grandfather was seen, 
with somewhat confused face, bidding on a high 
chair and a cradle. As these newly-purchased 
articles came into the house, the old clock in 
its excitement struck five, when it ought to 
have sounded foury but the pendulum cried 

9* 



102 THE OLD CLOCK. 

" Order ! " and ever)^thing came back to Its 
former composure, save, that as a dash of sun- 
shine struck the face of the clock, it seemed to 
say, ** Time - pieces are not fools ! " Clocks 
sound the march of generations. A time to 
be born, as well as a time to die. Tick — tock ! 
Tick — tock ! 

A mischievous child trying to catch the 
pendulum : a crying child held up to be quieted 
while listening to the motion of the works : a 
curious child standing on a chair trying to put 
his fingers among the cogs to see what they 
are made of: a tired child falling asleep in a 
cradle. Henceforth the clock has beautiful 
accompaniment. Old-time cradle with a mo- 
ther's foot on It, going " Rickety — rack ! rickety 
— rack!" All infantile trouble crushed under 
the rocker. Clock sinmnof, " I started before 
you were born." Cradle responding, "That 
which I swing shall live after you are dead." 
Clock chanting, " I sound the passing of Time." 
Cradle answering, " I soothe an heir of 
Eternity." Music ! cradle to clock. Clock to 
cradle. More tender than harp, more stirring 
than huntsman's buo-le. 



THE OLD CLOCK. IO3 

The old time -piece had kept account of the 
birthday of all the children. Eighteen times 
it had tolled the old year out, and rung the 
new year in, and fair Isabel was to be married. 
The sleighs crunched through the snow, till at 
the doorway with one sudden crash of music 
from the bells the horses halted, and the guests, 
shawled and tippeted, came in. The stamp of 
heavy boots in the hall knocked off the snow, 
and voices of neighborly good-cheer shook the 
dwelling. The white - haired minister stood 
mid -floor waiting for the hour to strike, when 
the clock gave a premonitory rumble to let 
them know it was going off, and then hammered 
eight. The blushing pair stepped into the 
room, and the long charge was given, and at 
the close a series of explosive greetings, no 
simpering touch of the lips, but good, round, 
hearty demonstrations of affection into which 
people threw themselves before kissing was 
an art. The clock seemed to enjoy it all, and 
every moment had something to say : 

'* I stood here when she was born. I was 
the only one present at the courtship. I told 
the young man when it was time to go, although- 



104 THE OLD CLOCK. 

sometimes he minded me not, and I had to 
speak again. I ordered the commencement 
of ceremonies to-day. I will dismiss the group. 
Good luck to Isabel, and an honest eight - day 
clock to bless her wherever she may go. Tick 
— tock! Tick — tock!" 

After many years grandfather became dull 
of hearing, and dim of sight. He could not 
hear the striking of the hours, but came close 
up and felt of the hands, and said : 

" It is eight o'clock, and I must go to bed." 

He never rose again. 

He could not get his feet warm. The 
watchers sat nio^ht after nicrht, listenine to the 
delirious talking of the old man, the rehearsal 
in broken sentences of scenes long ago gone 
by — of how the Tories acted, and how the 
Hessians ran. 

All spake in a whisper, and moved around 
the room on tiptoe ; but there was one voice 
that would not be quieted. If the watchers 
said — " Hush ! " it seemed to take up a louder 
tone. It was the old clock in the next room. 
It looked so sad when, watching for the hour to 
give the medicine, the candle was lifted to its 



THE OLD CLOCK. IO5 

face. At the wedding it laughed. Now it 
seemed to toll. Its wheels had a melancholy 
creak ; its hands, as they passed over the face, 
trembled and looked thin, like the fingers of 
an old man moving in a dying dream. 

Poor old clock ! 

The hand that every Saturday night for forty 
years has wound it up will soon be still. The 
iron pulses of the old time-piece seem to flutter, 
as though its own spirit were departing. Its 
tongue is thick ; its face is white as one struck 
with death. 

But, just as grandfather's heart, after run- 
ning for eighty years, ceased to tick, the old 
clock rallied, as much as to say : 

" It is the last thing I can do for him, and so 
I must toll the death-knell — one ! two ! three ! 
four ! 'v^v^ ! six ! seven ! eight ! nine ! ten ! 
eleven ! twelve ! " 

With that it stopped. 

Ingenious craftsmen attempted to repair it, 
and oiled the wheels, and swung the pendulum. 
But it would not go ! 

Its race was run ; its heart was broken ; its 



I06 THE OLD CLOCK. 

soul had departed. When grandfather died, 
the clock died with him. 

What if the furniture dealer did set it down 
and cover it up with his rubbish. If the soul 
go straight, it makes but little difference to us 
where we are buried. 

It Is time that dust and ashes should cover 
the face and hands of the dear old clock. 
Dust to dust! 





OUT-OF-DOORS. 




N this the brightest week of the 

brightest month of all the year, I sit 

down to write that which I hope may 

be pleasant to read when red - armed Autumn 

smites his anvil, and through all the woods the 

sparks are flying, and it needs not a prophetic 

eye to see the mountains from base to tip-top 

filled with horses and chariots of fire. Indeed, 

June and October, if they could see each other, 

would soon be married. Not much difference 

between their ages ; the one fair, and the other 

ruddy ; both beautiful to look upon, and typical ; 

the one holding a bunch of flowers, and the 

other a basket of fruit. The south winds would 

harp at the nuptials, and against the uplifted 

chalices would dash the blood of strawberry 

107 



I08 OUT-OF-DOORS, 

and grape. To that marriage altar January 
would bring its cups of crystal, and April its 
strung beads of shower, and July its golden 
crown of wheat. 

Another dream of our life is fulfilled. For 
the last eight years we have wanted a place 
where for a few weeks, apart from the hard 
work of our profession, we could sit with our 
coat off, laugh to the full extent of our lungs 
without shocking fastidious ears, and raise 
Cochin-China hens of the pure breed. 

While yet the March snows were on the 
ground we started out to purchase a place in 
the country. Had unaccountable experiences 
with land - agents, drove horses terrible for 
tardiness or speed, gazed on hills and flats, 
examined houses with roof pitched or hori- 
zontal, heard fabulous stories of Pennsylvania 
grass, and New Jersey berries, until one day, 
the wind a hurricane, and the roads slush, and 
the horse a-drip with rain from blinder to trace, 
we drove up in front of a cottage, the first 
glance at which assured us we had come to the 
fulfilment of our wishes. 

In selecting a place, the first requisite is 



OUT-OF-DOORS. IO9 

seclusion. There is a profound satisfaction in 
not being looked at. After dwelling for a con- 
siderable time in a large place, you are apt to 
know a multitude. If on some Monday morn- 
ing, starting down street, you feel decidedly 
frisky, you must nevertheless walk with as 
grave a step as though ascending a pulpit. If 
you acted out one-half the blitheness you feel, 
a score of gentlemen and ladies would question 
your sanity. A country village affords no 
retreat. There everybody knows everybody's 
business. You cannot raise half a dozen 
goslings without having them stoned for pick- 
ing off your neighbor's gooseberries. Gossip 
wants no better heaven than a small villaee. 
Miss Glib stands at her gate three times a day 
talking with old Mrs. Chatterbox, and on rainy 
days at the blacksmith shop the whole business 
of the town swims in a tank of tobacco -juice 
of the worst plug. Everybody knows whether 
this morning out of the butcher's cart you 
bought mutton or calf's liver, and the mason's 
wife, at the risk of breaking her neck, rushes 
down stairs to exclaim, " Just think of it ! Mrs. 

Stuckup has bought a sirloin steak, and she is 
10 



no OUT-OF-DOORS. 

no better than other people ! " Your brass 
kettle is always borrowed. A bandbox was 
seen going from the millinery-shop to the house 
of a villager on Saturday afternoon, and on 
Sunday morning a score of people are early at 
church, head half- turned toward the door, ready 
to watch the coming in of the new purchase, 
handkerchief up to mouth, ready to burst out 
at what they pronounce a perfect fright of a 
bonnet. They always ask what you gave for 
a thing, and say you were cheated ; had some- 
thing of a better quality they could have let 
you have for half the money. We have at 
different times lived in a small village, and 
many of our best friends dwell there, but we 
give as our opinion that there are other places 
more favorable for a man's getting to heaven. 
Yes, our place must be secluded. Not 
roused at night by fire - engines, nor wakened 
in the morning by the rattle of milkman's 
wagon. Our milk-can shall come softly up in 
the shape of our clear -eyed, sleek - skinned, 
beautiful Devon. No chalk - settlings at the 
bottom of the milk, or unaccountable things 
floating on the top — honest milk, innocent of 



OUT-OF-DOORS. Ill 

pump, foaming till it seems piled up above the 
rivets of the pail - handle. The air at noon 
untormented of jar and crash and jostle : only 
hen's cackle, and sheep's bleat, and cow's bel- 
low, and the rattle of clevises as the plough 
wheels at the end of the furrow. No calling 
in of people just because they suppose it is 
expected, but the coming in of neighbors and 
friends because they really want to see you, 
their appetite so whetted with the breath of 
ploughed ground that they are satisfied if you 
have nothing but ham for dinner. Such seclu- 
sion we have at Woodside. 

It is never real morning except in the coun- 
try. In the city in the early part of the day 
there is a mixed color that climbs down over 
the roofs opposite, and through the smoke of 
the chimney, that makes people think it is time 
to get up and comb their hair. But we have 
real morning in the country. Morning ! de- 
scending " from God out of heaven like a bride 
adorned for her husband." A few momen'ts 
ago I looked out, and the army of night-sha- 
dows were striking their tents. A red light on 
the horizon that does not make me think as it 



112 OUT-OF-DOORS. 

did Alexander Smith of " the barren beach of 
hell," but more like unto the fire kindled on the 
shore by Him whom the disciples saw at day- 
break stirring the blaze on the beach of 
Genesareth. Just now the dew woke up in 
the hammock of the tree - branches, and the 
light kissed it. Yonder, leaning against the 
sky, two great uprights of flame, crossed by 
many rundles of fire ! Some Jacob must have 
been dreaming. Through those burnished 
gates a flaming chariot rolls. Some Elijah 
must be ascending. Morning ! I wish I had 
a rousing bell to wake the whole world up to 
see it. Every leaf a psalm. Every flower a 
censer. Every bird a chorister. Every sight 
beauty. Every sound music. Trees trans- 
fio^ured. The skies in conflao^ration. The air 
as if sweeping down from hanging-gardens of 
heaven. The foam of celestial seas plashed 
on the white tops of the spiraea. The honey- 
suckle on one side my porch challenges the 
sweet-brier on the other. The odors of helio- 
trope overflow the urns and flood the garden. 
Syringias with bridal blossoms in their hair, and 
roses bleeding with a very carnage of color. 



OUT-OF-DOORS, II3 

Oh, the glories of day-dawn in the country ! 
My pen trembles, and my eyes moisten. Un- 
like the flaming sword that drove out the first 
pair from Eden, these fiery splendors seem 
like swords unsheathed by angel hands to 
drive us in. 

We always thought we would like to have 
a place near a woods. A few trees will not 
satisfy us. They feel lonely, and sigh, and 
complain about the house ; but give me an 
untamed woods that with innumerable voices 
talk all night in their sleep, and when God 
passes in the chariot of the wind wave their 
plumes and shout, as multitudes in a king's 
procession. 

Our first night at Woodslde was gusty, and 
with the hum of multitudinous spring-leaves 
in our ears we dreamed all night of waves 
roaring and battalions tramping. Shrubs and 
bushes do not know much, and have but little 
to say, but old trees are grand company. Like 
Jotham's, they talk in parables from the top of 
Gerizim ; have whole histories in their trunk ; 
tell you of what happened when your father 
was a boy ; hold engravings on their leaves of 
10* . 



114 OUT-OF-DOORS. 

divine etching, and every bursting bud is a 
" Thanatopsis." There are some trees that 
were never meant to be civilized. With great 
sweat and strain I dug up from the woods a 
small tree and set it in the door-yard; but it 
has been in a huff ever since. I saw at the time 
that it did not like it. It never will feel at 
home among the dressed-up evergreens. It is 
difficult successfully to set hemlocks, and kal- 
mias, and switch -hazel, into the rhyme of a 
garden. They do better in the wild blank- 
verse of the forest. 

We always thought that we would like a 
place which, though secluded, would be easy 
of access to the city. We always want our 
morning newspaper by breakfast. This little 
world is so active that we cannot afford to let 
twenty-four hours pass without hearing what 
new somersault it has taken. If we missed a 
single number we would not know that the day 
before the Czar of Russia had been shot at. 
Some day we must have a certain book. We 
need an express to bring it. Oh, it is pleasant 
to sit a little back and hear the busy world go 
humming past without touching us, yet confi- 



OUT-OF-DOORS. II5 

dent that if need be our saddle could in ten 
minutes rush us into it. 

Thank God for a good, long, free breath in 
the country! For the firsts time in ten years 
we feel rested. Last evening we sped along 
the skirt of the wood. Our horse prefers to 
go fast, and we like to please him ; and what 
with the odor of red clover-tops, and the breath 
of the woods, and the company with us in the 
carriage, and the moonlight — it was nothing 
less than enchantment. 

There is something in this country air to put 
one in blandest mood. Yesterday we allowed 
a snake to cross our path without any disposi- 
tion on our part to kill it. We are at peace 
with all the world. We would not hurt a spi- 
der. We could take our bitterest foe and orive 
him a camp-stool on the piazza. We would 
not blame him for not liking us if he liked our 
strawberries. We would walk with him arm 
in arm through watermelon-patch and peach- 
orchard. He should be persuaded that if we 
could not write good sermons and vivacious 
lectures, we can nevertheless raise great pump- 
kins, and long oranoe-carrots, and Drumhead 



no OUT-OF-DOORS. 

cabbacre. We would take him In our carrlaore, 
going at consistent ministerial gait, as though 
on the way to Old School Presbytery, never 
racing with any one, if there were danger of 
our being beaten. We hereby proclaim peace 
forever with any man who likes our hens. We 
fear we would have been tempted to sign Jeff 
Davis's bail-bond if he had praised our early 
scarlet radishes. 

Amidst such scenes till autumn. Congre- 
gations would be advantaged by it if for a few 
weeks of every year they would allow their 
pastors a little farm -life. Three weeks at 
fashionable watering - place will not do the 
work. Theie is not enough salts and sulphur 
in all the springs to overcome the tight shoes, 
and the uncomfortable gloves, and the late 
hours, and the high living, and the dresses 
economical at the neck. Rather turn us out 
to physical work. A sharp hoe will hack to 
pieces all your dyspepsia. A pruning-knife 
will cut off the excrescences of your disposi- 
tion. The dash of the shower that wets you 
to the skin will cool your spirit for ecclesiastical 
strife. Daily swinging of the axe will tone up 



OUT-OF-DOORS. 11/ 

your nerves. Trampling down the hay as It Is 
tossed Into the mow will tread Into forgetful- 
ness your little perplexities. In the wake of 
the plough you may pick up strength with which 
to battle public Iniquity. Neighbors looking 
over the fence may think we are only weeding 
cantaloupes, or splitting rails, or husking corn, 
when we are rebuilding our strength, enkin- 
dling our spirits, quickening our brain, purify- 
ing our theology, and blessing our souls. 

Here I stop. The aroma of the garden 
almost bewilders my senses. Flowers seem to 
me the dividing-line between the physical and 
the spiritual. The stamen of the honeysuckle 
is the alabaster pillar at which the terrestrial 
and the celestial part and meet. Out of the 
cup of the water-lily earth and heaven drink. 
May the blessing of larkspur and sweet-william 
fall upon all the dwellers in country and town ! 
Let there be some one to set a tuft of migno- 
nette by every sick man's pillow, and plant a 
fuschia In every working-man's yard, and place 
a geranium In every sewing-girl's window, and 
twine a cypress about every poor man's grave. 
And, above all, may there come upon us the 



ii8 



OUT-OF-DOORS. 



blessing of Him whose footsteps the mosses 
mark, and whose breath is the redolence of 
flowers ! Between these leaves I press thee — 
O " Lily of the Valley ! " 





HOBBIES. 




E all ride something. It Is folly to 
expect us always to be walking. The 
cheapest thing to ride is a hobby : it 
eats no oats, it demands no groom, it breaks 
no traces, it requires no shoeing. Moreover, 
it is safest: the boisterous outbreak of chil- 
dren's fun does not startle it; three babies 
astride it at once do not make it skittish. If, 
perchance, on some brisk morning it throw its 
rider, it will stand still till he climbs the saddle. 
For eight years we have had one tramping the 
nursery, and yet no accident; though mean- 
while his eye has been knocked out and his 
tail dislocated. 

When we get old enough to leave the nur- 
sery we jump astride some philosophic, meta- 
physical, literary, political, or theological hobby. 

119 



I20 HOBBIES. 

Parson Brownlow's hobby was the hanging of 
rebels ; John C. Calhoun's, South Carolina ; 
Daniel Webster's, the Constitution ; Wheeler's, 
the sewing-machine ; Doctor Windship's, gym- 
nastics. For saddle, a book ; for spur, a pen ; 
for whip, the lash of public opinion ; for race- 
course, platform, pulpit, newspaper- office, and 
senate chamber. Goodyear's hobby is made 
out of India - rubber, Peter Cooper's out of 
glue, Townsend's out of sarsaparilla bottles, 
Heenan's out of battered noses. De Witt 
Clinton rode his up the ditch of the Erie Canal, 
Cyrus Field under the sea, John P. Jackson 
down the railroad from Amboy to Camden ; 
indeed, the men of mark and the men of worth 
have all had their hobby, great or small. The 
philosophy is plain. Men think a great while 
upon one topic, and its importance increases 
till it absorbs everything else, and, impelled by 
this high appreciation of their theory, they go 
on to words and deeds that make themselves 
thoroughly felt. We have no objections to 
hobbies, but we contend that there are times 
and places, when and where they should not be 
ridden. A few specifications. 



HOBBIES. 121 

We have friends who are allopathlsts, homoe- 
opathists, Thompsonians, or eclectics. We have 
no more prejudices against one school than the 
other. Let them each set up their claims. 
One of our friends about five years ago became 
a homoeopathist. All right ! But since then 
she has been able to talk of nothing else. She 
insists on our taking the pellets. We say, 
" We feel somewhat tired to - night ; " she ex- 
claims, " Cinchona or Cocculus ! " We sneeze 
quite violently, and she cries " Belladonna ! " 
We suggest that the apple - dumpling did not 
agree with us, and she proposes " Chamomilla." 
When she walks I seem to hear the rattling 
of pellets. Discovering my prejudice against 
pills, she insists on my taking it in powder. I 
tell her that ever since my chaplaincy in the 
army I have disliked powder. She says I will 
rue it when too late. Perhaps I may, but I 
cannot stand these large doses of homoeopathy. 
I had rather be bled at once and have done 
with it, than be everlastingly shot with pellets. 
She talks it day and night. Her Sabbath is 
only a sanctified homoeopathy. She prefers 
theology in very small doses. Her hope of 



122 HOBBIES. 

the reformation of society is in the fact that 
ministers themselves are sinners — " Similia 
similibiis curanturr She thinks it easier for a 
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than 
for old-school doctors to enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. Alas ! how much calomel and jalap 
they will have to answer for ! How will they 
dare to meet on the other shore the multitudes 
that they let slip before their time, when they 
might with a few pellets have bribed Charon to 
keep them this side of Acheron and Styx ! 
She reads to us 2 Chron. xvi. 12, 13, " Asa 
sought to the physicians, and slept with his 
fathers." You see they killed him ! She con- 
siders herself a missionary to go out into the 
highways and hedges of allopathy and eclecti- 
cism to compel them to come in. She is an 
estimable lady. We always like to have her 
come to our house. She is more interested in 
your health than any one you would find in all 
the hard-hearted crew of allopathy. But five 
years ago she got a side-saddle, threw it on 
the back of a hobby, and has been riding ever 
since — tramp, tramp, tramp — round the parlor, 
through the hall, up the stairs, down the cellar, 



HOBBIES. 123 

along the street, through the church; and I 
fear that in her last " will and testament " she 
will have nothing to leave the world but a 
medicine-chest, well-worn copies of " Hahne- 
mann's Chronic Diseases," and " Jahr's Manual," 
and directions as to how many powders are to 
be put in the tumblers, with the specific charge 
to have the spoons clean, and not mix the 
medicines. 

We notice that many have a mania for talk- 
ing of their ailments. One question about 
their health will tilt over on you the great 
reservoir of their complaints. They have told 
the story so often that they can slide through 
the whole scale from C above to C below. 
For thirty years their spine has been at a dis- 
count, and they never were any better of 
neuralgia, till they took the rheumatism. At 
first you feel sympathy for the invalid; but 
after awhile the story touches the ludicrous. 
They tell you that they feel so faint in the 
morning, and have such poor appetite at noon, 
and cannot sleep nights, and have twitches in 
their side, and lumbago in their back, and 
swellings in their feet, and ringing in their ears, 



124 HOBBIES. 

and little dots floating before their eyes ; and 
have taken ammoniacum, tincture of cantha- 
rides, hydragogue julep, anthelmintic powder, 
golden syrup of antimony, leaves of scordium, 
and, indeed, all hepatics, carminatives, anti- 
febriles, antiscorbutics, splenetics, anthritics, 
stomachics, ophthalmics ; they have gargled 
their throat with sal ammoniac, and bathed 
their back w^th saponaceous liniment, and w^orn 
discutient cataplasms. That very moment they 
are chewing chamomile flowers to settle their 
stomachs, and excuse themselves for a moment 
to take off a mustard -plaster that begins to 
blister. They come back to express the fear 
that the swelling on their arm will be an 
abscess, or their headache turn to brain fever. 
They shake out from their handkerchief deli- 
cate odors of valerian and assafcetida. They 
are the harvest of druggists, and the amaze- 
ment of physicians, who no sooner clear the 
pain from one spot than it appears In another. 
If one joint loses the pang, another joint gets 
it, and, the patient having long ago resolved 
never again to be well, it is only a question 
between membrane and midriff. 



HOBBIES. 125 

At times we should talk over our distresses, 
and seek sympathy, but perpetual discourse 
on such themes wears out the patience of our 
friends. You always see the young people 
run from the groaning- valetudinarian ; and the 
minister fails in his condolence, for why speak 
of the patience of Job to one who says that 
boils are nothing to his distresses. The hobby 
he rides is wounded and scabbed and torn with 
all the diseases mentioned in farriery, glanders, 
bots, foot -rot, spavin, ring-bone, and "king's 
evil." Incurable nags are taken out on the 
commons and killed, but this poor hobby jogs 
on with no hope on the other side of the Red 
Sea of joining Pharaoh's horses. The more it 
limps, and the harder it breathes, the faster 
they ride it. 

Now, Aunt Mary's sick-room was the bright- 
est room in the house. She had enough aches 
and pains to confound Materia Medica. Her 
shelf was crystallized with bottles, and the stand 
was black with plasters. She could not lay 
down more than five minutes. Her appetite 

was denied all savory morsels. It was always 
II* 



126 HOBBIES. 

soup, or toast, or gruel, or panado. She had 
not walked Into the sunlight for fifteen years. 
Weddings came, for which with her thin, blue- 
veined hands she had knit beautiful presents, 
but she could not mingle In the congratulations, 
nor see how the bride looked at the altar. 
She never again expected to hear a sermon, or 
sit at the sacrament, or join in the doxology of 
worshippers. The blithe days of her girlhood 
would never come back, when she could range 
the fields in spring-time in flushed excitement, 
plucking handfuls of wUd-roses from the thicket 
till hands and cheeks looked like different 
blooms on the same trellis. 

While quite young she had been sent to a 
first-class boardino;- school. When she had 
finished her education, she was herself finished. 
Instead of the romp of the fields, she took the 
exhausting exercise at five o'clock of the school 
procession, madame ahead ; madame behind ; 
step to step, waterfall to waterfall ; eyes right ; 
chins down ; noses out ; their hearts like 
muffled drums beating funeral marches. Stop 
the side glances of those hazel eyes ! Quit 
the tossincT of those flaxen curls! Cease that 



HOBBIES. 127 

graceful swing of the balmoral across the street 
gutter ! 

She was the only one of the family fortunate 
enough to get a first - class education. The 
other females grew up so stout and well, they 
might have been considered, vulgarly speaking, 
healthy, and went out Into life to make happy 
homes and help the poor ; only once, and that 
in the presence of a wound they were dressing, 
having attempted to faint away, but failed In 
the undertakinof, as their constitution would 
not allow It. Thus they always had to acknowl- 
edge the disadvantage of not having had the 
first - class education of Aunt Mary. What If 
her nerves were worn out, she could read Les 
Aventu7^es de Telemaque to pay for It. She had 
sharp pains, but she could understand the 
Latin phrases In which Dr. Pancoast described 
them. Her temples throbbed, but then It was 
a satisfaction to know that it came from being 
struck on the head with a Greek lexicon. The 
plasters were uncomfortable, but, oh ! the 
delights of knowing their geometrical shape : 
the one a pentagon, the other a hexagon. At 
school in anatomical class she had come to 



128 HOBBIES. 

believe that she had a Hver, but it had been 
only a speculative theory ; now she had prac- 
tical demonstration. 

Enough to say, Aunt Mary was a life - long 
invalid, and yet her room was more attractive 
than any other. The children had to be 
punished for going up stairs and interrupting 
Auntie's napping hours. The kitten would 
purr at the invalid's door seeking admittance. 
At daybreak, the baby would crawl out of the 
crib and tap its tiny knuckles against the door, 
waiting for Aunt Mary to open it. If Charlie 
got from a school-fellow a handful of peaches, 
the ripest was saved for Auntie. At night- 
fall, a little procession of frisky night - gowns 
went up to say their prayers in Auntie's room, 
until three years of age supposing that she 
was the divinity to be worshipped : one hand 
on their foot, and the other over their eyes that 
would peep through into Auntie's face during 
the solemnities, the " forever and ever, amen," 
dashed into Auntie's neck with a shower of 
good-night kisses. 

When a young maiden of the neighborhood 
had a great secret to keep, she was apt to get 



HOBBIES. 129 

Aunt Mary to help her keep it. Auntie could 
sympathize with any young miss who at the 
picnic had nice things said to her. Auntie's 
face had not always been so wrinkled. She 
had a tiny key to a little box hid away in the 
back part of the top - drawer, that could have 
revealed a romance worth telling. In that box 
a pack of letters in bold hand directed to Miss 
Mary Tyndale. Also, a locket that contained 
a curl of brown hair that had been cut from 
the brow of the college student in whose death 
her brightest hopes were blasted. Also, two 
or three pressed flowers, which the last time 
she was out she brought from the cemetery. 
When in conversation with a young heart in 
tender mood she opened that box, she would 
say nothing for some moments after. Then 
she would look very earnestly Into the eyes of 
the maiden, and say, " God bless you, my dear 
child ! I hope you will be very happy ! " 

Everybody knew her by name, and people 
who had never seen her face, the black and 
white, the clean and filthy, those who rode in 
coaches, and those who trudged the tow-path, 
would cry out when one of the family passed, 



130 HOBBIES, 

" How is Aunt Mary to -day?" On Monday 
morning the minister would go in, and read 
more theology in the bright face of the Chris- 
tian invalid than he had yesterday preached In 
two sermons, and her voice was as strengthen 
ing to him as the long-metre Doxology sung 
to the tune of " Old Hundred." When people 
with a heartache could get no relief elsewhere, 
they came to that sick - room and were com- 
forted. Auntie had another key that did not 
open the box in the back part of the top-drawer 
of the bureau : it was a golden key that opened 
the casket of the Divine promises. Beside 
the bottles that stood on Auntie's shelf, was 
God's bottle in which He gathers all our tears. 
God had given to that thin hand the power to 
unloose the captive. And they who went in 
wailing came out singing. John Bunyan's 
pilgrim carried his burden a great while : he 
never knew Auntie. 

Yes ! yes ! the brightest room in the house 
was hers. Not the less so on the day when 
we were told she must leave us. That one 
small room could not keep her. She heard a 
voice bidding her away. The children broke 



HOBBIES. 131 

forth into a tumult of weeping. The place got 
brighter. There must have been angels in 
the room. The feet of the celestial ladder 
were on both sides of that pillow. Little Mary 
(named after her aunt) said, " Who will hear 
me say my prayers now?" George said, 
" Who now will take my part ? " Katie cried, 
" Who will tell us sweet stories about heaven ? " 
Brighter and brighter grew the place. Angels 
IN THE ROOM ! Sound no dirge. Toll no bells. 
Wear no black. But form a procession of 
chants, anthems, chorals, and hallelujahs ! Put 
white blossoms in her hand ! A white robe on 
her body ! White garlands about her brow ! 
And he, from whose tomb she plucked the 
flowers the last time she was out, come down 
to claim his bride. And so let the procession 
mount the hill, chants, anthems, chorals, and 
hallelujahs : Forward I the line of march reach- 
ing from enchanted sick - room to " house of 
many mansions." 

So Auntie lived and died. Always sick, but 
always patient. Her cheerfulness unhorsed 
black-mailed Gloorh. A perpetual reproof she 
was to all who make sicknesses their hobby. 



132 HOBBIES. 

We next refer to reformatory hobbies. We 
believe in the doctrines of teetotalism. In a 
glass of ice-water, our only beverage, we drink 
to the success of that cause. We advocate 
the Maine law. In all appropriate times and 
places we are ready to fight drunkenness. It 
has dug its trench across the land, and filled 
it with the best blood of the nation. But 
some of our friends have been turned into 
temperance monomaniacs. They would have 
temperance cars, and temperance stages, and 
temperance steamboats, none to ride in them 
but teetotalers. They have actually proposed 
milk to take the place of wine at the sacrament. 
They would make the taking of the pledge 
a prerequisite of church - membership. They 
have no mercy for the man who has champagne 
on his table. They would let a man die of 
typhoid, before they would give him a drop of 
Burgundy. They have dwelt upon the one 
evil till all others are submerged and forgotten. 
They have horrid nightmares of demijohn and 
decanter. They talk as though. If a man cleared 
the whisky cask, he was safe for heaven ; for- 
getful of the fact that the only decent thing 



HOBBIES. 133 

about thousands of men is that they do not 
drink. They would do that if they were not 
too stingy. We knew a man, who, it was said, 
to save expense, wheeled his wife to the grave 
on a wheel - barrow. He never drank. We 
caught a man stealing watermelons from our 
patch. He was a teetotaler. It would have 
been well for us if he had disliked melons as 
much as he did whiskey. We* have found 
strong advocates for abstinence in Moyamen- 
sing Prison. We believe a man may be con- 
sistent in all his professions of temperance, and 
yet not be worthy to untie the latchet of some 
who always have wine on their table. 

The temperance cause is mightily hindered 
by such reformatory monomaniacs. In every 
path you stumble over their hobby. 

So we find anti-tobacconists on their hobby. 

They can tell you how many miles of pig-tail 

have been chewed in the last century, and how 

many navies would be borne up by the saliva 

if the Atlantic Ocean, emptied of its water, 

could become the spittoon of the nation. We 

admit that it is not pleasant to sit in a coach 

or car with a chewer between us and the wind, 
12 



134 HOBBIES. 

the wind blowing toward us. It Is as disagree- 
able as preaching with a cold in your head and 
no pocket-handkerchief. 

We neither smoke nor chew. The only 
odor of the weed in our house is from the 
cigars of our friends who come to see us. 
And yet we know of two or three men who 
went to heaven, we think, notwithstanding 
they were smokers. In their last sickness, 
whenever they could sit up they took a chew 
of tobacco. We have no sympathy with those 
who cannot unwrinkle their upper lip for a 
half hour after they have caught the breath of 
a smoker. There are ladies so shocked by the 
smoking odors which their husbands bring 
from the club-room that it needs very careful 
treatment to avoid hysterics ; as sensitive as 
the lady, married in mature years, who persist- 
ed in settinof her husband's boots outside the 
door, because she could not stand the smell of 
leather. We would rather have our nose out- 
raged with a whiff from an old pipe than our 
ear deafened with the clatter of a crazy re- 
former. We would not have even the man 
who snuffs, and chews, and smokes, all in the 



HOBBIES. 135 

same minute, kicked to death by the heels of 
our hobby. William H. Seward snuffs. Ru- 
fus Choate took opium. George W. Bethune 
smoked. Good Abraham Van Nest had wine 
on his table. Presidents of colleges have 
chewed tobacco. And I expect that after we 
have been gone so long that our resting-place 
shall be as completely unknown as that of 
Moses, many will get to heaven who have not 
thought just as we do. We will never turn 
people Into the right way by riding over them 
with our hobby. 

We take a step farther, and look at some "* 
of our theological hobbies. This is the only 
kind of horse that ministers can afford to own, 
and you ought not to be surprised If some- 
times In this way they take an airing. We 
have had some troubles of late in the fact that 
In these days of brotherhood, Old School and 
New School got astride of the same hobby, 
and one fell off before, and the other fell off 
behind. There was not room enough for so 
many between mane and tail. It Is well to re- 
member that hobbies sometimes kick, and that 
theologians, like other people, are vulnerable. . 



136 HOBBIES. 

How apt we are to get a religious theory, 
and ride it up hill and down, and expect that 
all the armed cavalry of the church shall make 
way for our hobby! There are theologians 
who spend their time in trying to douse Bap- 
tists, thinking it a great waste to have so much 
water and not use it for some decisive purpose. 
Others would like to upset the anxious bench 
of the Methodists, and throw them on their 
faces, so that they would make less noise. 
Others would like nothing better than to rip a 
hole in the surplice of Episcopacy. Others 
take the doctrine of " election " for their favor- 
ite theory, and ride, and ride, till they find 
themselves elected to leave the settlement. 
Others harp on the " perseverance of the 
saints," till they are unhorsed by the persever- 
ance of sinners. And this good man devotes 
himself to proving that in Adam all fell, till the 
hearers wish that the speaker had fallen clear 
out of their acquaintanceship. 

This ecclesiastic gives his time to contro- 
versy, and his matin and vesper are, " Blessed 
be the Lord, who teacheth my hands to war 
and my fingers to fight." Such persons were 



HOBBIES. 137 

sound asleep that Christmas night when the 
angel song fell to the hills, " Peace on earth, 
good will to men." We have been watching 
for the horns to come out on their forehead. 
They are the rams and the he-goats. They 
feel that they were appointed from eternity to 
stick somebody, and they beat Samson In the 
number of Philistines they slay with the same 
weapon. They go to the Bible as foemen to 
Springfield Armory or Troy Arsenal, demand- 
ing -so many swords, rifles, and columbiads. 
They were made in the same mould as Morris- 
sey, the pugilist, and should long ago have 
been sent to Congress. Like Nebuchadnezzar, 
they have claws, and, like him, ought to go to 
grass. In the day when the lamb and the lion 
lie down together, we fear these men will be 
out with a pole trying to stir up the animals. 

Here are brethren who devote themselves 
to the explaining of the unexplainable parts 
of the Scripture. Jonah's whale comes just In 
time to yield them whole barrels of blubber. 
They can explain why It was that Jonah was 
not digested by the whale. The gastric juice 

having no power to act upon a living body, It 

12* 



138 HOBBIES. 

did not dissolve the fibrine or coagulated albu- 
men Into chyme, and consequently it could not 
pass the pyloric orifice of the stomach. Beside, 
this was an intelligent whale, and probably 
knew that he had swallowed a minister who 
had a call to Nineveh, and never had any in- 
tention of turning him into whale, but rather 
to prepare him for that class of ministers who 
are lachrymose, and on all occasions disposed 
to blubber. We have heard men explain this 
miracle by natural laws until we felt ourselves 
attacked by the same sickness that disturbed 
the leviathan of the Mediterranean when he 
suddenly graduated the prophet ; and we felt 
sure that if, in an unguarded moment, we had 
swallowed a Jonah, he would have had good 
prospects of speedy deliverance. 

Our expounder must also explain the ass 
that spake to Balaam. The probability is that 
the animal had originally been endowed with 
powers of vocalization, but, being of a lethar- 
gic temperament, had never until that day 
found sufficient inducement to express himself; 
the probability being that this animal always 
retained the faculty of speech, and was married, 



HOBBIES. 



139 



and that he has a long line of descendants, who 
still, like the one of the Scriptures, are disposed 
to criticize ministers. 

Here is another brother who devotes forty 
Sundays of the year to the Apocalypse. He 
has put his lip to all the trumpets and examined 
all the vials. He understands them all. He 
reads the history of the present day in Revela- 
tion, and finds there Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, 
Abraham Lincoln, and General Grant. 

Now, all Scripture is to be expounded as far 
as possible ; but one part is not to absorb at- 
tention to the neglect of others. Let us not 
be so pleased with the lily that Christ points 
out in his sermon that we cannot see the raven 
that flies past ; nor while we examine the salt 
to find if it has lost its savor, forget to take the 
candle from under the bushel. The song of the 
morning stars at the creation must have re- 
sponse in the Doxology of the hundred and 
forty and four thousand. David's harp and 
the resurrection trumpet are accordant. The 
pennon swung from the cedar masts of ships 
of Tarshlsh must be answered by the sail of 
fishing -boat on Genesareth. Into this great 



140 HOBBIES. 

battle for God we are to take Gideon's sword, 
and David's sling, and the white horse of Vic- 
tory on which Immanuel triumphs. Hiddekel 
and Jordan must be confluent. Pisgah and 
Moriah, Sinai and Calvary, must all stand in 
the great Scriptural ranges. No solo or quar- 
tette in this Bible music, but the battle- chorus 
of all the patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, and 
apostles. In the wall of heaven are beauti- 
fully blended jasper and emerald, beryl and 
sardonyx, amethyst and chrysoprasus. No one 
doctrine, however excellent, must be ridden 
constantly. The pulpit is the most unfit place 
in all the world for a hobby. 

Let us glance at our literary hobbies. 
There is no grander field than that of just 
criticism. Through Edinburgh Review Noon 
Talfourd pours the sunlight of his genius upon 
William Hazlitt and Mackenzie, so that we 
know not which to be most thankful for, 
essayist, novelist, or critic. Christopher North 
breaks in like a new summer upon Thomson's 
" Seasons." Archibald Alison lifted up the 
works of magnificent Chateaubriand from com- 
parative obscurity into the admiration of all 



HOBBIES. 141 

nations. Walter Scott, hieing away from 
Abbotsford with the sheriff after him, may have 
had his nerves soothed by what Francis Jeffrey 
kindly wrote about "The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel." 

But harsh criticism is the only mood of some 
literati. They never add anything to the world's 
literature, but have an endless pique against 
those who do. They take up the poem that 
cost five years of application, and run their pen 
across the cantos, and throw it aside, saying, 
" I have finished that fellow : hand us another ! " 
They are provoked because Thiers and Disraeli 
will not lay still after being by them assassin- 
ated. Long ago these literary skull-breakers 
demolished George Eliot for writing " Adam 
Bede," and yet she dares to attempt "The 
Spanish Gipsy." They spend their life in hunt- 
ing for something to chew up : goats browsing 
on morning-glories. They sit in the southwest 
corner of magazines like spiders waiting for 
flies. After a while they sting themselves to 
death with their own poison. They act as 
though some Herod had sent them forth to 
massacre all literary productions of two years 



14? HOBBIES. 

and under. They seem to have adopted the 
sentiment of a Scotch Review: ''There is 
nothine of which nature has been more bounti- 
ful than poets. They swarm Hke the spawn of 
the codfish with a vicious fecundity that requires 
destruction." 

There were literary men who begrudged 
John Mitford the piece of old carpet under 
which he slept. Marwaux had nothing but 
denunciation for Moliere. Cowley found great 
satisfaction in rasping Chaucer. Pope flew in 
a rage at Colley Cibber. Fielding saw no 
power in Richardson. Johnson said that he 
*' would hang a dog that read the Lycidas of 
Milton twice." The accomplished Edinburgh 
Revieiu impales on one ramrod Fenimore 
Cooper, Walter Scott, and Washington Irving, 
as dunces. Montesquieu died from the stab 
of a critic's pen. Berkeley, Reid, Goldsmith, 
Jeremy Taylor, and Chillingworth had the 
hounds after them. Some of the orrandest 

o 

men and women that ever lived have been 
crushed under the critic's hobby. 

We have found people in parlor and street 
on a conversational hobby. Weddings, and 



HOBBIES. 143 

funerals, and harvest homes, it was reconstruc- 
tion, or the follies of the administration, or the 
dishonesty of officials, or the degeneration of 
society, or the wonderful exploits of their 
canary-bird, or the sagacity of their gray-hound, 
which at the first whistle comes frisking and 
bounding, his muddy paws on your white suit, 
attesting his powers of discrimination. We 
knew a man who would occupy your time in 
describing his herd of swine. Indeed, some 
of them were genuine Suffolks. Other gen- 
tlemen took you to the cabinet of curiosities 
brought from foreign travel ; he invited you to 
the piggery. We could get him on no other 
topic. Once we thought we had him cornered 
for a religious interview, but he turned upon us 
with irresistible emphasis, and said, " Dominie ! 
I will send you half a hog ! " The bristling 
porkers of Gadara were possessed by Satanic 
influence, but this man was possessed by the 
porkers. That one of the herd which had been 
most neglectful of its ablutions, and least par- 
ticular about Its style of diet, was beautiful to 
him. ''Just look at that fellow!" he would 
say. " What an eye — eh ? See bim craunch 



144 HOBBIES. 

that pumpkin ! " An animal with legs so short, 
and jaws so long, and bristles so sharp, and 
toilet so imperfect, is not fit for a hobby. 

With others the continuous theme is ventila- 
tion. We have wrecked too many sermons 
and lectures on ill-ventilated audience-rooms, 
not to understand the value of pure air. 
There are not twenty properly ventilated 
lecture-halls east of the Allegheny Mountains. 
We have more veneration for every other 
antiquity than for stale air. Atmosphere that 
has been bottled up for weeks is not quite 
equal to " Balm of Thousand Flowers." Give 
us an old log across the stream to sit on, rather 
than an arm-chair in the parlor that is opened 
chiefly on Christmas and Thanksgiving Days. 
While waiting for this year's turkey to get 
browned, we do not want to smell last year's. 
There are church-basements so foul that we 
think some of those who frequent them for 
devotion get sooner to the end of their earthly 
troubles than they would if there were less 
dampness in the walls ; some of them suffering 
from what they suppose to be too much re- 
ligion, when it is nothing but wind-colic. Still 



HOBBIES. 145 

we may put too long a stress upon ventilation. 
Here is a man who sits with the doors open, 
and while your teeth are chattering with cold, 
descants on the bracing weather. He sleeps 
with all his windows up, with the thermometer 
below zero. His prescription for all the world's 
diseases is fresh air. And if the case be chronic, 
and stubborn, and yields not to the first course 
of treatment, then — more fresh air. If the 
patient die under the process, the adviser will 
say, " This confirms my theory ! Don't you 
see the difficulty ? His only want was capacity 
to take in the air ! " 

Witticism is the hobby of another. We 
admire those who have power to amuse. We 
cannot always have the corners of our mouth 
drawn down. Puns are not always to be 
rejected. We should like to have been with 
Douglas Jerrold when his friend said to him, 
"I had a curious dinner — cajves tails!' And 
Jerrold instantly replied, '' Exti^emes meet !'' 

But we cannot always have the corners of 
our mouth drawn up. We can all of us stand 
humor longer than wit. Humor is pervasive ; 
wit explosive. The one smiles; the other 

13 K 



146 HOBBIES. 

laughs. Wit leaps out from ambush ; humor 
melts out of a summer sky. Wit hath re- 
actions of sadness ; humor dies into perpetual 
calm. Humor is an atmosphere full of elec- 
tricity ; wit is zigzag lightning. They both 
have their mission, but how tedious the society 
of the merry - andrew and professed epigram- 
matist ! The muscles of your face weary in 
attempts to look pleased. You giggle, and 
simper, and titter, and chuckle, and scream, 
and slap your hand on the table, but you 
do not laugh. You want information, facts, 
realities, as well as fun. Theodore Hook and 
Charles Lamb Qrrinned themselves into melan- 
choly. Clowns are apt to be hypochondriac. 
The company of two or three so - called witty 
chaps is as gloomy to us as the furnishing- 
room of an undertaker. It is the earnest man, 
with an earnest work to do, who in unexpected 
moment puts the pry of his witticism under 
your soul, and sends you roaring with a 
laughter that shuts your eyes, and rends your 
side, and makes you thankful for stout waist- 
coat, which seems to be the only thing that 
keeps you from explosion into ten thousand 



HOBBIES. 147 

quips, quirks, epigrams, repartees, and conun- 
drums. Working men have a right to be 
facetious. We have no objection to a hen's 
cackle, if it has first laid a large round ^^^ for 
the breakfast-table. But we had on our farm 
a hen that never did anything but cackle. The 
most rousing wit ever uttered was by stalwart 
men like Robert South and Jean Paul Richter. 
With them wit was only the foaming flake on 
the wave that carried into port a magnificent 
cargo. It was only the bell that rang you to 
a banquet of stalled ox and muscovy. But 
lackaday ! if when at the ringing of the bell 
we went to find nothine but a cold slice of 
chuckle, a hash of drollery, jokes stewed, and 
jokes stuffed, and jokes panned, and jokes 
roasted, and jokes with gravy, and jokes with- 
out gravy. Professor Wilson, the peerless 
essayist, could afford to put on " Sporting 
Jacket," and mould the snow - ball for the 
" Bicker of Pedmount," and go a picnicking 
at Windermere, and shake up into rollicking 
glee Lockhart, Hamilton, Gillies, and his other 
Blackwood cronies, if, in that way refreshed for 
toil, he could come into the University of Edin- 



148 HOBBIES. ^ 

burgh to mould and shape die heart and Intel- 
lect of Scotland, with a magic touch that will 
be felt a thousand years. He is the most 
entertaining man who mixes in proper propor- 
tions work and play. We prefer a solid horse, 
spirited and full of fire, but always ready to 
pull : somewhat skittish on a December morn- 
ing, but still answering to the bit: while capable 
of taking you out of the dust of the man who 
does not want you to pass, yet willing to draw 
ship-timber ; in preference to a frisky nag that 
comes from the stall sideways, and backward, 
getting up into the stirrups of his own saddle, 
and throwing you off before you get on. The 
first is a useful man's facetlousness ; the last Is 
a joker's hobby. 

Pride of ancestry Is with others the chief 
mania. Now we believe In royal blood. It Is a 
orrand thino- to have the rieht kind of kindred. 
There is but little chance for one badly born. 
If we belonged to some families that we know 
of, we would be tempted at once to give our- 
selves up to the police. But while far from 
despising family blood, we deplore the fact that 
so many depend entirely upon heraldry. They 



HOBBIES. 149 

have not been In your company a minute be- 
fore they begin to tell you who their father 
was and their mother. The greatest honor 
that ever happened to them was that of having 
been born. It Is a congratulation that there 
was but one mechanic In their line, and he 
helped build the first steamboat. They were 
no possible relation to one Simon, a tanner. 
The only disgraceful thing in their line, as far 
back as they can trace It, was that their first 
parents In Paradise were gardeners. There 
was a big pile of money somewhere back, a 
coat of arms, and several fine carriages. 
They feel sorry for Adam, because he had no 
•grandfather. To hear them talk you would 
suppose that the past was crowded with their 
great progenitors, who were lords, and dukes, 
comrades of Wellington, accustomed to slap- 
ping George Washington on the shoulder, 
calling him by the first name ; " hail fellow 
well met" with Thomas Jefferson. As If It 
had taken ten generations of great folks to 
produce one such Smythe. He Is no rela- 
tion to Smith. That family spell, their name 
differently. But you find that In the last 
13* 



ISO HOBBIES. 

seventeen hundred years diere were several 
breaks In die broadclodi. Do not say any- 
thinof about their Uncle Georoe. Confound 
the fellow! He was a blacksmith. Nor ask 
about Cousin Rachel. Miserable thing ! She 
is In the poorhouse. Nor Inquire about his 
grandfather's politics. He was a Tory. Nor 
ask what became of his oldest brother. He 
was shot In a hen-roost. Several of the family 
practised in the High Courts of the United 
States and England — as criminals. One of 
their kindred, was a martyr to chlrography, hav- 
ing written the name of John Rathbone & Co. 
under a promissory note, and written It so well 
that John Rathbone & Co. were jealous, and 
seriously objected. But all this is nothing, so 
long as they spell Smith with a jj/ in the middle 
and an e at the end. They have ahvays moved 
in the circle of the RIttenhouses, and the Min- 
turns, and the Grinnells, and the Vanderbllts. 
They talk much of their silver plate to every- 
body save the assessor. In the year 1 700 they 
had an ancestor that rode In the carriage with 
a duchess. »Yet a boy one day had the auda- 
city, with a piece of chalk, to erase the armo- 



HOBBIES. 151 

rial bearings from the side of their coach, and, 
in allusion to the industrial pursuits charged on 
certain members of that high family, sketched 
in place thereof, as coat of arms, a bar of soap 
and a shoe-last. Oh ! this awful age of home- 
spun and big knuckles ! We would all have 
gone back farther than we have in search of 
ancestral stars and garters, crest and scutcheon, 
but we are so afraid of falling into kettles of 
tried tallow, and beds of mortar, and pans of 
dish-water. 

But we are all proud. We slept one night 
at the West in the rustic house of President 
Fillmore's father, in the very bed occupied the 
week before by Daniel Webster and the Presi- 
dent. We felt that we must carry off from 
that room a memento. Not able to get any- 
thing more significant, we brought away from 
the peg in the room one of old Mrs. Fillmore's 
cap-strings. It was with no ordinary emotions 
that, after coming down into every-day life, we 
displayed the trophy. 

Still how distasteful Is the companionship of 
one who is always on the subject of his high 
associations and honored ancestry. We get 



152 HOBBIES. 

vexed, and almost wish that their ancestors had 
been childless. At proper times and to proper 
decree let such themes be discussed, but what 
a folly to be on all occasions displaying Mrs. 
Fillmore's cap-strings ! It is an outrageous 
case of cruelty to animals when a man persists 
in having all his progenitors join him in riding 
the ancestral hobby. 

Now it so happened that on one occasion all 
these hobbyists met on one field. What a 
time ! Ten hobbies ridinor ao^ainst each other 
in cavalry charge ! Each rider was determined 
to carbine all the others. The allopathist 
loaded his gun with blue pills ; the homceopath- 
ist loaded his with pulsatilla and stramonium. 
The hypochondriac unsheathed his sharpest 
pains for the onset. The temperance mono- 
maniac struck right and left with an ale-pitcher. 
The tobacco fanatic threw snuff into the eyes 
of those who could not see as he did. The 
controversialist and critic hung across the sad- 
dle a long string of scalps they had taken. 
The buffoon bespattered the whole regiment 
with a volley of poor jokes. And the man of 
distinguished ancestry attempted to frighten 



HOBBIES. 153 

the combatants from the field by riding- up 
with a hobby that had on its back the resur- 
rected skeletons of all his forefathers. 

Too much hobby-riding belittles the mind, 
distorts the truth, and cripples influence. All 
our faculties were made for use. He who is 
always on one theme cannot give full play to 
judgment, imagination, fancy, reason, wit, and 
humor. We want harmony of intellect — all 
the parts carried, treble, alto, tenor, and base, 
accompanied by full orchestra, sackbut, violon- 
cello, cornet, drum, flute, and cymbals. He 
who goes through life using one faculty, hops 
on one foot, instead of taking the strong, 
smooth gait of a healthy walker. He who, 
finding within him powers of satire, gives him- 
self up to that, might as well turn into a wasp 
and go to stinging the bare feet of children. 
He who is neglectful of all but his imaginative 
faculty, becomes a butterfly flitting idly about 
till the first " black frost " of criticism kills it. 
He who devotes himself to fun-making, will 
find the better parts of his soul decaying, and 
his temporary attractiveness will be found to be 
the phosphorescence of rotten wood. He who 



154 HOBBIES. 

disports himself in nothing but dialectics and 
mathematics, w'll get badly hooked by the 
horns of a dilemma, and after a while turn into 
trapezoids and parallelograms — his head a 
blackboard for diagrams in spherical geome- 
try — and, while the nations are dying, and 
myriad voices are crying for help, will find 
their highest satisfaction in demonstrating that 
if two angles on equal spheres are mutually 
equilateral, they are xViM\M2}\y equiatigulaj' : the 
flying missiles in a South American earthquake 
to him are only brilliant examples in conic 
sections ; the one describing a parabola, that 
an ellipse, the other a hyperbola. 

When God has given us so many faculties 
to use, why use only one of them ? With fifty 
white palfreys to ride, why go tilting a hobby ? 

He who yields to this propensity never sees 
the whole of anything. There is no sin in all 
the earth but slavery, or intemperance, or mu- 
nicipal dishonesty. All the sicknesses would 
be healed if they would take our medicine. 
The only thing needed to make the world 
what it ought to be, is a new pavement on our 
sidewalk. The nations are safe as soon as we 



HOBBIES. 155 

can bring to an end the expectorations of to- 
bacco-juice. All that we can see of anything 
is between the leather pricked-up ears of our 
hobby. 

This frantic urging on of our pet notion 
will come to nought. Our prancing charger 
will sink down with lathered flanks and we be 
passed on the road by some Scotch Presbyte- 
rian, astride a plain draught-horse that has been 
pasturing in the field next to the kirk, jogging 
along at an easy pace, knowing it has been 
elected that he is to reach the kingdom. 

Brethren ! let us take a palm-leaf and cool 
off! Let your hobby rest. If it will not other- 
wise stop, tie it for a few days to the white- 
washed stump of modern conservatism. Do 
not hurry things too much. If this world 
should be saved next week, it would spoil 
some of our professions. Do not let us do up 
things too quick. This world is too big a ship 
for us to guide. I know from the way she 
swings from larboard to starboard that there 
is a strong Hand at the helm. Be patient. 
God's clock strikes but once or twice in a 
thousand years ; but the wheels all the while 



156 



HOBBIES. 



keep turning. Over the caravanserai of Beth- 
lehem, with silver tongue, it struck one. Over 
the University of Erfurt, Luther heard it strike 
NINE. In the rockings of the present century 
it has sounded eleven. Thank God ! It will 
strike twelve ! 






STAR ENQAGEMENT. 

NE November night, a few years ago, 
there was to be a meteoric display on 
the most magnificent scale. Astro- 
nomical journals had excited the anticipations 
of the whole country. 

Indeed, no star ever had more inducement 
to shoot well than on that night, for the audi- 
ence was immense — gathered at windows, on 
house - tops, and in observatories. The only 
objection we had to the bill of entertainment 
was that the doors opened at a very late hour, 
and at a time when we are usually in a very 
unimpressible state of mind. 

We hit upon the following device. We 
hired, by extra inducement, the servant to sit 
up and watch, and, at the very first indication 
of restlessness on the part of the celestial 
bodies, to thump mightily at our dormitory. 



H 



157 



158 STAR ENGAGEMENT. 

We placed our hat and shoes In places where 
they could Immediately be found, and, before 
the gas went out, marked the relative position, 
both of hat and shoes, lest, in the excitement 
of rising up, we might get these articles of ap- 
parel transposed, and put on at the extremity 
opposite that for which hatters and boot- 
makers originally Intended them. We slept 
with one eye open, and in a state of expectancy, 
such as one feels when he wants to take an 
early train, and fears that the alarm - clock is 
disordered. No such meteoric display had 
taken place since we were a year old — an age 
when our astronomical attainments were very 
limited. Neither had our servant witnessed 
anything of the kind, and her Ideas were very 
vague as to what would really be the character 
of the entertainment. We warned her as to 
the peril of falling asleep, as when the stars 
really did shoot, they often shot at random. 
It was some time before we could persuade her 
of the necessity of having the gas out while 
watching, for she persisted in the Idea that you 
can always see better with a light than with- 
out it. 



STAR ENGAGEMENT. I59 

We had fallen into our first nap when there 
was a loud rap at the door, and we gave a 
bound to the floor. The servant told us that 
she had seen one star which had been very 
uncertain In Its movements, and had crossed 
lots, wagging a long tail of fire. We cried 
out: "Do not call us for just one star, but 
wait till they all get a - going ! " We took 
another nap and woke up, and not hearing 
anything about the celestial disturbances, the 
wife went in to see how the servant was get- 
ting on, and found her prostrate and Insensible ! 
What was the matter ? Had the meteoric dis- 
play taken place, and this innocent one in the 
wild sweep been knocked over, another victim 
of philosophical experiments ? No ! We found 
that she had been overcome of sleep. When 
roused up, she immediately spoke, thus reliev- 
ing our anxiety In regard to the fatality of the 
occurrence, and her first words (showing the 
ruling passion for astronomical Investigation 
still unimpaired) were the startling interroga- 
tion : " Have they shot ? " 

I concluded to depend on my own watch- 
fulness, and forthwith to look out. Saw one 



l6o STAR ENGAGEMENT. 

"star" in motion, coming up the street on two 
feet, but concluded from his looks that he 
would not shoot unless in case of a riot. I 
gazed intently, and saw no signs of motion 
among the celestials, except a few that seemed 
to twinkle mischievously, as if making fun of 
my white cravat — an article I never wear ex- 
cept in case of hasty toilet. 

But the astronomical observation was far 
from being a failure, for in- returning my head 
from the open air, I struck it violently against 
the window, and immediately saw stars. They 
flew every whither, and, what was peculiar, 
they were of all colors — white, black, blue, 
green, and striped. But from the unfavorable 
impression they produced on me at the time, I 
feel like warning people against putting out 
their heads in the night-time, when the meteors 
are carelessly swinging their shillelahs. We 
did not blame the stars, nor the astronomers 
who excited our anticipations, but we all felt 
disappointed. 

MORAL. 

Do not calculate too much upon meteors. I 
would rather have the clear, steady shining of 



STAR ENGAGEMENT. l6l 

a morning star, than all the capers that comets 
cut up. Saturn or Mars are more to be de- 
pended on than these celestial vagrants. The 
curse of the world Is its unsanctlfied geniuses, 
who go darting across the political and eccle- 
siastical heavens just long enough to make the 
nations stare, and then go out in darkness. 
We love brilliancy ; but let It be that of a fixed 
star — steady, cheerful, regulated. 

In some great crisis of the world's night, I 
have calculated upon the behavior of some one 
of shining capacities, and I have gone out to 
hear what noble thing he would say, or to see 
what thrilling deed he would do, and what long 
line of light he would stretch across the heavens. 
But my calculations have failed. My disap- 
pointment was full. Another failure at star- 
shooting. 

The moral world wants fewer comets, and 
more Jupiters ; fewer fireflies, and more lamps ; 
fewer Jack-o'-the-lanterns to dance the swamps, 
but more evening stars to cheer the world's 
darkness ; fewer Lord Byrons, and more John 
Fosters. We never knew of but one meteor 
that went forth on a grand mission — the one 

14* L 



1 62 



STAR ENGAGEMENT. 



that ran to stand over Bethlehem ; and that 
got all its glory from the fact that it pointed to 
the Sun that never sets. Grand thing it was, 
if, on that night in November, in addition to 
our horrible cold, we caught these moral re- 
flections. 






CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 

HEN our older people were children, 
there was no juvenile literature. If 
the book appetite arose, they were 
fed on a slice of Wilberforce's " Practical View 
of Christianity," or little tidbits from " Edwards 
on the Affections," or were given a few nuts 
to crack from Chalmers's "Astronomical Dis- 
courses." Their fathers and mothers sighed 
lest these little ones should turn out badly, 
because they liked ginger-snaps better than 
Westminster Assemblies, and would spend 
their money for marbles when it ought to have 
gone toward furnishing red flannel shirts for 
the poor heathen children in Kamtchatka. 
You have lost all faith in John Bunyan's veraci- 
ty, and whistled Incredulously when you came 
to that story about Apollyon. Pictures were 

163 



l64 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 

scarce, and a book was considered profusely 
adorned diat had at die beginning a sketch of 
the author in gown and bands, and long hair 
of powdered whiteness, and at the close in 
ornate letters the word Finis, which you were 
told meant The End, although, after wearily 
reading it through, you did not know whether 
it was the end of the book or the end of you. 
You might as well feed your baby on lobster- 
salad as at that early age to have been expect- 
ed to digest the books that were set before 
you. 

But now the children's library is filled with 
books of large type, and tasteful vignettes, and 
lids ridged, and flowered, and scrolled, and 
columned, and starred with all the fascinations 
of the book -bindery. There is now danger 
that what is called the " milk for babes " shall 
become nothing but chalk and water. Many 
of the Sabbath schools are doine much to fos- 
ter a taste for trashy literature. In some of 
these libraries you will find sentimental love- 
yarns ; biographies of generals who were very 
brave, and good examples in some respects — 
when they were sober ; fairy stories, in which 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 165 

the fairies had very loose morals ; accounts of 
boys and girls who never lived — books in 
which there is no more religion than in " Don 
Quixote " or " Gulliver's Travels." We have 
been wondering why some religious society 
did not publish a nice little edition of " Baron 
Munchausen," with a moral at the end, showing 
our dear little people the danger of tying one's 
horse to the top of a church-steeple. On Sun- 
day night your child does not want to go to 
bed. He cries when compelled to go, and 
looks under the bed for some of the religious 
hobgoblins that come out of the Sunday-school 
library. Religious spooks are just as bad as 
any other spooks. A child is just as afraid of 
Floras, Pomonas, sylphs, oreads, and fairies, as 
of ghosts. The poor little darling in the blue 
sack goes home with a book, thinking she has 
heaven under her arm, and, before she gets 
through reading the story of love and adven- 
ture, feels so strange that she thinks she must 
be getting lots of religion. 

In the choice of our children's books, let us 
not mistake slops for simplicity, nor insult our 
children's tastes by disquisitions about "footsy- 



l66 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 

tootsies," or keep informing them of the his- 
torical fact, which they learned a great while 
ago, that " Mary had a little lamb," or assemble 
the youngsters in coroner's jury to clear up 
the mystery as to " who killed cock-robin." If 
a child has no common sense at seven years 
of aee, it never will have. 

Have at least one book in your library in 
which all the good children did not die. My 
early impression from Sunday - school books 
was that religion was very unhealthy. It 
seemed a terrible distemper that killed every 
boy and girl that it touched. If I found myself 
some day better than common, I corrected the 
mistake for fear I should die ; although it was 
the general opinion that I was not in much 
danger from over-sanctity. But I do believe 
that children may have religion and yet live 
through it. A strong mustard -plaster and a 
teaspoonful of ipecac will do marvels. Tim- 
othy lived to grow up, and we are credibly 
informed that little Samuel woke. Indeed, the 
best boys I ever saw, occasionally upset things 
and got boisterous, and had the fidgets. The 
goody-goody kind of children make namby- 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 167 

pamby men. I should not be surprised to find 
that a colt which does not frisk becomes a 
horse that will not draw. It is not religion 
that makes that boy sit by the stove while his 
brothers are out snow-balling, but the "dumps." 
The boy who has no fire in his nature may, af- 
ter he has grown up, have animation enough to 
grease a wagon-wheel, but he will not own the 
wagon nor have money enough to buy the 
grease. The best boy I ever knew, before he 
went to heaven, could strike a ball till it soared 
out of sight, and, in the race, as far as you 
could see, you would find his red tippet coming 
out ahead. Look out for the boy who never 
has the fino^ers of a orood lauor-h tickle him un- 
der the diaphragm. The most solemn-looking 
mule on our place has kicked to pieces five 
dash-boards. 

There are parents who notice that their 
daughter is growing pale and sick, and there- 
fore think she must be destined to marry a 
missionary, and go to Borneo, although the 
only recommendation she has for that position 
is that she will never be any temptation to the 
cannibals, who, while very fond of cold mission- 



l68 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 

ary, are averse to diseased meat ; or, finding 
their son looking cadaverous, think he is either 
going to die, or become a minister, considering 
that there is great power of consecration in 
Hver complaint, and thinking him doubly set 
apart, who, while presbytery are laying their 
hands on his head, has dyspepsia laying its 
hand on his stomach. 

Oh ! for a relio-ious literature that shall take 
for its model of excellence a boy that loves 
God, and can digest his dinner in two hours 
after he eats it ! Be not afraid to say, in your 
account of his decease, that the day before you 
lost him he caught two rabbits in his trap down 
on the meadow, or soundly thrashed a street- 
ruffian who was trying to upset a little girl's 
basket of cold victuals. I do not think that 
heaven is so near to an ill - ventilated nursery 
as to a good gymnasium. If the church of 
God could trade off three thousand hogsheads 
of relieious cant for three thousand hoorsheads 
of fresh air and stout health, lue should be the 
eainers, but the fellow with whom we traded 
would be cheated mercilessly and for even 





CLERICAL FARMING. 

OES It pay ? " we are every day asked 
by citizens who at this season begin 
to wonder what they will do with 
themselves next summer. " How did the cab- 
bages turn out?" interrogates an Incredulous 
parishioner with a twinkle in his eye, and a 
laugh twitching at the corner of his mouth. 
Is there not a fatal repulsion between pen and 
hoe ? Can one who Is shepherd of a city flock 
keep Southdowns from getting the hoof- rot? 
How much out of pocket at the end of the 
year? 

We answer, that clerical farming does pay. 
Notwithstanding a weasel invaded the poultry- 
yard, and here and there a chicken died of the 
" gaps," and one of the frosts saved us a great 

deal of trouble picking peaches, and one day, 
15 169 



I/O CLERICAL FARMING. 

in the process of making butter, "soda ash" 
was taken for salt, and the caterpillars of our 
neighborhood were very fond of celery, and 
the drinking of milk without any chalk at first 
made us all sick — the shock too sudden for 
the constitution — still we feel that we made 
our fortune last summer. With a long-handled 
hoe we turned up more than our neighbors 
dreamt of. Though a few hundred dollars out 
of pocket (a fact we never acknowledged to 
agricultural infidels), we were physically born 
again. We have walked stronger ever since, 
for our walk last summer In the furrow. Our 
hay-pitching was an anodyne that has given us 
sound sleep all winter. On our new grind- 
stone we sharpened our appetite, and have 
since been able to cut through anything set 
before us. We went out In the spring feeling 
that the world was going to ruin ; we came 
back in the autumn persuaded that we were 
on the eve of the millennium. 

Like all other new beginners, our first attempt 
at buying a horse resulted In our getting bitten, 
not by the horse. From Job's vivid description 
we vent forth to look for a horse whose " neck 



CLERICAL FARMING. I71 

was clothed with thunder." We found him. 
We liked the thunder very well, but not so 
well the lightning that flew out of his feet the 
first time he kicked the dash-board to pieces. 
We give as our experience that thunder is 
most too lively to plough with. We found him 
dishonest at both ends. Not only were his 
heels untrustworthy, but his teeth, and the only 
reason we escaped being bitten by the horse, 
as well as the jockey who sold him, was that 
we are gifted with powers of locomotion suf- 
ficient for any emergency, especially if there 
be sufficient propulsion advancing from the 
rear. Job shall never choose another horse 
for us. We telegraphed to the jockey, " Come 
and take your old nag, or I will sue you !" He 
did not budge, for he was used to being sued. 
Having changed our mind, we telegraphed, 
offering to pay him for the honor of swindling 
us, and the telegram was successful. We gave 
him a withering look as he rode away, but he 
did not observe it. 

Our first cow was more successful. She has 
fu rnished the cream of a good many jokes to 
our witty visitors, and stands, I warrant, this 



1/2 CLERICAL FARMING. 

cold day, chewing her cud hke a philosopher — 
the calmness of die blue sky in her eyes, and 
die breadi of last summer's pasture-field sweep- 
ing from her nostrils. Gentle thing ! When 
the city boys came out, and played " Catch,*' 
runnlne under her, or after^vard standlnor on 
both sides, four boys milking at once, she dis- 
sented not. May she never want for stalks or 
slops ! 

We were largely successful with one of our 
two pigs. Our taste may not be thoroughly 
cultured, but we think a pig of six weeks is 
positively handsome. It has such an innocent 
look out of its eyes, and a voice so capable of 
nice shades of inflection, whether expressive 
of alarm or want. Such a cunning wink of 
the nose, such artistic twist of tail ! But one 
of the twain fell to acting queer one day. It 
went about, as if, like its ancestors of Gadara, 
unhappily actuated, till after a while it up and 
died. We had a farrier to doctor it, and poor 
thing ! It was bled, and mauled, till we knew 
not whether to ascribe its demise to the disease 
or the malpractice of the medical adviser. But 
its companion flourished. We had clergymen, 



CLERICAL FARMING. I73 

lawyers, and artists admire and praise it. We 
found recreation in looking at its advancement, 
and though the proverb says that you " cannot 
make a whistle out of a pig's tail," figuratively 
speaking, I have made a dozen out of that 
mobile and unpromising material. 

Our geese flourished. Much-maligned birds ! 
They are wise instead of foolish, save in the 
one item of not knowing how to lower their 
necks when you want them to go under the 
fence. (Who of us has not one weak point 
of character ?) They are affectionate, and die 
if shut up alone, and with wild outcry sympa- 
thize with any unfortunate comrade whose 
feathers have been plucked. From their wings 
they furnished the instrument for writing 
Walter Scott's " Rob Roy," and Thomas Car- 
lyle's " Sartor Resartus." Worth more than 
an eagle any day, have better morals, do pluck 
more nutriment out of the mud than eaeles do 
out of the sun. Save for Fourth of July 
orations eagles are of but little worth, filthy, 
cruel, ugly at the beak, fierce at the eye, loath- 
some at the claw ; but give me a flock of geese, 

white - breasted, yellow - billed, coming up at 
15* 



174 CLERICAL FARMING. 

night-fall with military tramp, in single file led 
on, till nearing the barn - yard they take wing, 
and with deafening clang the flying artillery 
wheel to their bivouacs for the night. 

Yes, clerical farming does pay. Out on the 
place we won the medal every day for pictures 
hung with fire - loops in the sky - gallery ; and 
for machinery by which the sun drew water, 
and the trees pumped up the juices, and the 
shower and sunshine wove carpets better 
than Axminister for Brindle and Durham to 
walk on. 

If a city clergyman have no higher Idea than 
a crop of turnips or corn, he had better not 
take a farm. It will be cheaper to let some- 
body else's hen lay the eggs, and to buy your 
tomatoes by the peck. But he who would like 
to look out of his window and see " rain on 
the new-mown grass," and at five o'clock would 
love to walk out and see " the day-spring from 
on high," or in the garden hear Christ preach- 
ing from the text, " Consider the lilies," or 
watch God feeding the ravens, or see him 
clothing " the grass of the field," or in the 
gush of full moonlight learn the sweetness 



CLERICAL FARMING. 175 

of the promise, "At evening tide it shall be 
light," — let such a minister get a place in 
the country, and spend the weeks that he has 
usually passed among the bright shawls of 
starched watering-places, with his coat off, in 
check shirt, and coarse boots, listening while 
" mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all 
cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things, 
and flying fowl" at matins and vespers praise 
the Lord ; geranium and branch of apple- 
blossom swinging their censers. 





MAKING THINGS GO. 




OMETIMES a man who seems to 
succeed is at every step a failure. 
There is more lawful fraud com- 
mitted than unlawful. Penitentiaries and the 
Court of " Oyer and Terminer " are for those 
clumsy rogues who do not know how to steal. 
The purloining of one cabbage ends in the 
"Tombs," but the absconding with one hun- 
dred thousand dollars wins a castle on the 
Rhine. So you see that men get into jail not 
because they steal, but because they do not 
steal enoucrh. There are estates cratherini^ 
that have not within them one honest dollar. 

But the general rule is that moral success is 
worldly success. It is easier to make a per- 
manent fortune in honorable ways than by 

176 



MAKING THINGS GO. I// 

dishonorable conduct. The devil is a poor 
financier. When the gold and the silver were 
laid down in the earth, they were sworn to 
serve the cause of righteousness, and they 
never go into the coffers of the dishonest with- 
out committing perjury. Lawful enterprise in 
the long run will declare larger dividends 
than dishonest scheming. The oil company 
of which Hon. Bogus Greaseback is President, 
and Hocus Pocus, Esq., is Secretary, at first 
declares twenty per cent, then ten per cent, 
afterward three per cent, and, last of all, no- 
thing, leaving the widows and orphans to play 
the beautiful game of " Money ! money ! who 
has the money ? " 

But fraudulent estates do not average a 
continuance of more than five years. Occa- 
sionally, an old man, having gathered large 
property by ignoble means, may die in its pos- 
session, bequeathing it to his heirs ; but when 
the boys get it, what with their wine, and what 
with their fast horses — ha ! how they will 
make it fly ! 

There is an honest work for every one to do. 
When a child is born, his work is already pre- 

M 



178 MAKING THINGS GO. 

pared for him. There is something in his 
nature which says : " Yonder is the field, the 
shop, the store ! Come, my Httle man ! Be 
busy ! " No doubt Samson, when he was a 
boy, sometimes gave premonition of what he 
was going to be, amusing himself by carrying 
off gates, and in chasing his playmates with the 
jawbone of a bleached carcass, and, long be- 
fore he fired off the three hundred fox-tails 
among the corn-shocks of the Philistines, had 
tried the same extreme measures on the cats 
of his father's house. Cowley evinced the 
poet when in very early life he was wrought 
into enchantment by the reading of Spenser's 
" Fairy Queen." Joshua Reynolds, in boyhood, 
prophesied the painter by hanging sketches 
around his father's house, although the dis- 
gusted father wrote under one of them : 
'' Done by Joshua out of pure idleness ! " 
Our own Van Derlyn began his career in 
boyhood by chalk sketches on the side of a 
blacksmith-shop. 

Nature invariably hints for what she has 
made a child. Here is a boy cunning at a bar- 
gain. At school he is extravagantly fond of 



MAKING THINGS GO. I79 

trading. He will not come home twice with 
the same knife, or hoop, or kite. To-morrow 
morning he will leave the liouse with an igno- 
minious yarn-ball — a great trial to a boy on 
the play-ground — but at night will come back 
with one of India-rubber, which, under the 
stroke of the bat, will soar almost out of 
sight, and then come down with long-continued 
bounce ! bounce ! Some morning, calculating 
on the lowness of the apple -market, he will 
take a satchel full to school. Immediately 
there is a rush in the market. He monopo- 
lizes the business. He sells at just the right 
time. The vigilant school-master, finding him 
bartering in what are not considered lawful 
business hours, brings him into port, and he is 
compelled by this government officer to dis- 
charge his cargo in the presence of his fellows, 
who gape upon him like a company of steve- 
dores. Can you doubt for a moment for what 
occupation he was designed ? He must be a 
merchant. 

Here is a boy of different liking. Across 
the brook he has thrown a dam, and whirling 
around is a water-wheel. He can construct 



l8o MAKING THINGS GO. 

anything he chooses — sleds for the winter, 
wagons for the summer, and boats for the 
river. His knife is most of the time out on a 
whittling excursion. Down on your best car- 
pets he plants his muddy tools. You are so 
pestered on the Saturdays when there is no 
school, it requires all of Sunday, and sharp 
sermons at that, to get your patience un- 
wrlnkled. Pigeon-coops on the barn and bird- 
houses in the trees, attest his ingenuity. Give 
him a trade. He must be a mechanic. 

Here is another boy. You do not know 
what to do with him. He is always starting 
an argument. He meets your reproof with a 
syllogism. He is always at the most inconve- 
nient time asking, " Why ? " He is on the 
opposite side of what you believe, but any 
thing for an argument. If you promised him 
a flogging, he would file a caveat to stop pro- 
ceedings, and, dissatisfied with your decisions, 
he gets out a certioTari, carrying matters up to 
the Supreme Court of his own reason. With 
all this he has a glib tongue, and when fairly 
started, it rattles like hail on a tin roof. His 
destiny is plain : he must be a lawyer. 



MAKING THINGS GO. l8l 

But if you should happen to have under 
your charge, as guardian or parent, a child not 
sharp enough to strike a bargain, not inge- 
nious enough to make a sled, not loquacious 
enough to start an argument, not inquisitive as 
to the origin of things, always behind in the 
school, and slow on the play-ground — there is 
then only this alternative : If he be fat and 
chubby, of unconquerable appetite and enpr- 
mous digestion, and lazy withal, then send him 
to the city, pull the wires, and make him an 
alderman. But if he be long and lean, sallow- 
cheeked, with nerves ever on the twitch, and a 
digestion that will not go, I know not what 
you will do with him unless you make him a 
minister. Alas ! for the absurdity rampant 
among families, that when, because of physical 
incompetency, a man is fit for nothing else, he 
is fit to be a " legate of the skies." Religion 
will never make up for lack of liver and back- 
bone. 



i6 





SATURDAY NIGHT. 

[E read Reynolds in the art-gallery: we 
read Longfellow by the sea ; we read 
Ik Marvel under the trees ; we read 
the weekly paper on Saturday night. When 
the week is past, and we gather at the evening 
stand, with the world put off, and our slippers 
put on, give us a good family newspaper. It 
is the hardest thing in the world to make. 

Family newspapers only a few years ago 
were dolorous things. The columns were full 
of accounts of boys and girls who always sat 
up straight, and kept their faces clean, and 
wiped their feet on the door - mat. The the- 
ology was cast-iron, and the story wooden, with 
a long moral, not growing out, but tagged on ; 

so that the children took the moral with a wry 

182 



SATURDAY NIGHT. 183 

face for the sake of getting the story, just as 
they swallowed the calomel with the promise : 
" There now, you shall have a sugarplum ! " 

The world has learned that a thine is not 
necessarily good because it is dry. There is 
no religion in chips. We never could see any 
sanctity in husks. The donkey hath no hilarity 
In his voice, and no nonsense In the twitch of 
his ear. He never w^as known to dance — yet 
he never gfets hieher than his feed-box, while 
the robin and the lark, from the tip of bill to 
tip of claw, all life and joy and merriment, with 
their wings brush the door-latch of heaven. I 
will like it the more If the editpr dips his pen 
In the dew to tell me of the morning, and in 
roseate to describe the sunset, and Into the 
purple vats to suggest the vineyards ; and If 
then he fasten his sheets together with a blue 
band, torn from the forehead of heaven. There 
is yet to be such a thing as holiness on the 
bells of the horses ; and when Religion shall 
have completed the conquest of the earth, I 
expect to see all the diamonds of the universe 
flashing in the rim of her tiara. 

The family newspaper must have a touch of 



l84 SATURDAY NIGHT. 

romance ! Alas ! for this day of naked facts ! 
We deplore this unromancing of everything. 
We have a rail - track to the top of Mount 
Washington. The trees under which Henry 
Clay walked are cut up into walking - sticks. 
Men have turned Passaic Falls into a mill-race. 
Be not surprised if Independence Hall gets to 
be an oyster-cellar. Dear old Santa Claus has 
been pushed off the top of the chimney and 
had his neck broken. Facts ! Facts ! Facts ! 
Give us in our family newspaper a little 
romance. It will do no harm to hear of moon- 
light ramble, and sail on the lake with only two 
in the boat ; and while you despise elopements 
as unwise and dangerous, do not fear to tell us 
of the father who wanted his daughter to marry 
some rich old Disagreeable, while the young 
man was ready with hard hands and loving 
heart to earn for her a home in the cottage. 
I am glad that the ladder did not break, and 
that Timothy Hardfist won the prize. 

Give us more spice in our family newspaper. 
We meet in our daily walks so much that is 
depressing, give us in our family newspaper 
whole bundles of spice : jokes that you can 



SATURDAY NIGHT. 185 

understand without laborious explanation, 
conundrums, quips and quirks, harmless satire, 
caricatures of the world's foibles, and looking- 
glasses In which to see our fallings. Yes, give 
place occasionally to the much -abused pun. 
Those only despise the pun who cannot make 
one. Take the quill, and after you have made 
the split In it, sharpen It down until the point 
is keen enough to puncture the toughest Incon- 
sistency. Let the sheet be fresh and healthy, 
in It a smell of cedar and new-cut grass. Let 
us hear In the rhythm of some of the sentences 
the moan of an untravelled wood, and the 
sweep of the wing of a partridge. Instead of 
the artificial dye of stale Imagery, crush against 
the printed leaf a bunch of huckleberries and 
sumac. We are tired out with all this about 
the nightingale ; for pity's sake, catch for us a 
brown - thresher, and let us hear a hen cluck. 
Instead of riding Bucephalus to death, halter 
that sorrel colt. Talk not so much to us about 
frankincense, to the neglect of pennyroyal and 
brookmint. Get out with your commonplace 
remark about " solitary horseman coming over 

the hill." Instead of talking so much about 

16* 



l86 SATURDAY NIGHT. 

the " Bulls of Bashan," drive up Brindle and 
Durham. 

This is a grand old world if you would only 
let us see it as It is. The book-worm who sits 
down to write, having learned only of trees, 
and mountains, and waters, from his library, 
knows nothing about them. You have to put 
on your high-top boots, and wade right out up 
to your waist to pluck a water-lily, If you would 
see it to the best advantage. I had been with 
many a picnic party to see " Buttermilk Falls," 
but not until the other day when I went alone, 
and had a stolen Interview with that cascade, 
did I really see her perfect beauty, as, shoving 
aside her white veil of mist, and throwing back 
her ribbons of rainbow, she told me all about 
her tragical leap from the rocks. 

On Saturday night, as we open the family 
paper, let us catch the odor of pine, and the 
glance of an autumnal leaf dropping like the 
spark from a forge. Let some geranium -leaf 
overpower the smell of printer's Ink. Tell us 
of home. Let us know how wives ought to 
be attentive to their husbands, and how hus- 
bands — but never mind that. Come, O 



SATURDAY NIGHT. iS/ 

weekly visitant! into the front door with a 
blessing. Our week's work done, and notes 
paid, and accounts squared, and the hurry over, 
and the Sabbath near, speak you a cheerful 
word to the desponding, a chiding word to the 
wandering, a soothing word to the perplexed ; 
and help the ten thousand of the weary and 
the foot - sore, and the hardly bestead, by the 
still camp - fires of life's great battle - field, to 
thank God that the seven days' march is over, 
and it is Saturday night. Before long our 
pens, and needles, and trowels, and yardsticks, 
and saws, and pickaxes will be still. With our 
hand in the hands of some loved one, we will 
be waiting for a brighter Sunday morning than 
earth saw ever. Others call that waiting — 
Death. I call it Saturday Night. 






THE HATCHET BURIED. 

HEN the other day the New School 
and Old School Churches kissed each 
other at Pittsburg, some one said, 
" Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in 
peace ! " We felt just the other way. We 
want to live now more than ever to see how 
matters will come out. It is wrone to want to 
die in such a time as this, when the armies are 
wheeling into line, and the batteries of earth 
and hell and heaven are being unlimbered for 
the contest which will decide who shall have 
the supremacy of this world. 

We have spent too much time in ecclesias- 
tical pugilism. We have lost about a hundred 
years in gunning for Methodists, and drowning 
Baptists, and beating Presbyterians to death 

■i88 



THE HATCHET BURIED. 1 89 

With the decrees, and pommelling Episcopa- 
lians with the butt-end of the liturgy. As at 
Bothwell Bridge the Scotch army quarrelled 
amonof themselves, eiehteen ministers, with 
eighteen different opinions, contending most 
fiercely, until Lord Claverhouse came down 
with disciplined troops and swept the field ; so 
in the time when hosts of darkness in mail of 
hell were coming upon us, we were contending, 
Old School against New School, Free-will Bap- 
tists against close communionists, Methodist 
Church North against Methodist Church South, 
and we have been routed on a hundred fields, 
when, forgetting everything but the one-starred 
banner under which we fought, and the Cap- 
tain who led us on, wejnight have shouted the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Thank God that so many 'of the rams of the 
Church have had their horns sawed off, and 
that the ecclesiastical chanticleers have lost 
their spurs. The books of controversialists 
will be on the shelves of college and State 
libraries, old and yellow and cobwebbed, until 
even the book -worms will get tired of the 
slumbrous literature, and depart from old 



190 THE HATCHET BURIED, 

leather-backs, and some day the books will be 
cast into the fire, and just before the last flame 
goes out, the world will see in the consuming 
scrolls the imacre of two reliorious combatants 
with their hands in each other's hair, combing 
it the wrong way. Bigotry is an owl that can- 
not see in the daytime ; on black and spectral 
wing it flits through the midnight heavens, and 
roosts in the belfries of ruined churches. 

The millennium has already begun. The 
Episcopalian lion is eating straw like a Presby- 
terian ox : and Baptist and Pedo-Baptist, while 
lovingly discussing their differences, are first 
sprinkled, and then immersed, by a baptism of 
the Holy Ghost. Peace ! If you, the Metho- 
dist, want an anxious seat, long as from Mul- 
berry street to the Golden Horn, have it, and 
may it be crowded with repentant sinners. 
And if it shall be found out that all our Pres- 
byterian brethren have been fore-oj'dained to 
eternal life. Bishops Simpson and Janes will 
rejoice with us in the fore-ordinadon. If this 
brother will preach in gown and bands, and 
the Western pioneer shall proclaim the Gos- 
pel in his shirt-sleeves, may the blessing come 



THE HATCHET BURIED. I9I 

down upon both the preachers. Life is too 
short, and the work too great, to allow dispu- 
tation about non-essentials. If a drowning 
man is to be pulled out of the floods, it makes 
but little difference whether the hand you 
reach out to him has on it buckskin mitten or 
kid glove. 

Let us all go to preaching. Send polished 
Paul up to Athens, and plain Bartholomew 
down 'among the fishing- smacks by the sea. 
Do not look so anxiously into your pockets 
for your diploma from Yale, or your license 
from presbytery. If the Lord does not send 
you 'into the ministry, no canon of the Church 
can shoot you into it. But if He has put His 
hand on your head, you are ordained, and your 
working apron shall be the robe, and the anvil 
your pulpit ; and while you are smiting the iron, 
the hammer of God's truth will break the flinty 
heart in pieces. Peter was never a sophomore, 
nor John a freshman. Harlan Page never 
heard that a tangent to the parabola bisects 
the angle formed at the point of contact by a 
perpendicular to the directrix and a line drawn 
to the focus. If George MuUer should attempt 



19- THE HATCHET BURIED. 

chemical experiments in a philosopher's labo- 
ratory, he would soon blow himself up. And 
hundreds oi men. grandly useful, were never 
struck on commencement stage by a bouquet 
flunof from die ladies' eaJlers*. 

Quick! Let us find our work. J T>;/ preach 
a sermon — you give a tract — you hand a 
flower — you sing a song — you give a crutch 
to a lame man — you teach die Sabbath class 
their A, B, C — you knit a pair of socks' for a 
foundling — you pick a splinter from a child's 
finder. Do somethino; I Do it now J We will 
be dead soon ! 








HOUSE OF DOGS. 




HERE is a great difference of opinion 
on the subject of dogs. By some 
people they are admired, and fondled, 
and petted, and have collars around their necks, 
and embroidered blankets for their backs, and 
they lie on the lady's pillow, and take their 
siestas on the lounge, and are members of the 
family, the first question in coming into the 
house after a ride being, "Where is Spot?" 

Others abhor dogs. The innocent canines, 
passing the threshold, are met with emphatic 
" Get out !'' They go with their head down all 
their days, once in a while lifting a timid eye 
to a passer-by ; but then, as if to atone for the 
outrage, giving a yelp of repentance and dart- 
ing; down the road. 



One-half the do 
17 



crs vou see bear the marks 

N 193 



194 HOUSE OF DOGS. 

of humiliation. They never saw a bone till all 
the meat was picked off, and no sooner did 
they find the gill of a beheaded chicken, and 
had gone under the shed for a noonday repast, 
than they were howled away. They have had 
split sticks on their tail, and tin pails appended, 
the whole bevy of boys shouting as the miser- 
able cur went down the street, rattle- te- bang. 
He frisked up pleasantly to greet a sweet 
lady as she came in the gate, and the damsel 
shrieked as if she had been massacred, and 
threw herself into the arms of her friends as 
soon as the door was opened, crying, ''That 
horrid doo; ! " What chance have dos^s at 
respectability? Who wonders that they steal 
sheep ? 

Now there is, back of Hoboken, a kennel 
large enough to accommodate fifty dogs. One 
day a citizen, passing that way, was reading an 
account of a ereat international council to be 
called, and forthwith the great dog that in- 
habited the big kennel took the suggestion, 
and said, " I will make proclamation to all the 
kingdom of dogs, and they shall come to declare 
and avenge their wrongs." 



HOUSE OF DOGS. I95 

Soon there was much barking, and it was 
found out that the clans were gathering. The 
amphitheatre of the kennel was crowded with 
hunters' dogs, and teamsters' dogs, and ladies' 
dogs, and rowdies' dogs. The great bull-dog, 
with one huge growl, called the meeting to 
order, himself taking the chair. 

He growled at the cruelty of men, and 
growled at the folly of women, and growled 
at the outrages of children, till his growl rose 
into a furious bark, in which the audience 
joined, rat-terriers snarling, greyhounds baying, 
spaniels yelping, so that the tumult was louder 
than a whole pack on the fox-chase when with 
full voice they burst away on the moors. All 
attempts at gaining order were ineffectual, till 
presiding bull-dog took rat-terrier by the neck, 
and shook him till the bones cracked, and all 
the poodles shrieked in sheer fright. 

Several watch-dogs seated themselves at the 
reporters' desk, and took notes of proceedings. 
A letter of regret, post - marked Switzerland, 
was read from a Saint Bernard dog, saying 
that he could not come, being busy in saving 
travellers from the snow in the Alpine passes, 



196 HOUSE OF DOGS. 

but signified himself ready to accept any dogma 
that might be enacted by the " House of Dogs." 
A letter was also read from a descendant of 
Throckmorton's pointer. He scorned the Invi- 
tation to be present. He did not believe In 
Democratic assemblages, he having descended 
from the most aristocratic pointer of all history, 
and could not have anything to do with Ameri- 
can mongrels. One of his great-grandfathers 
had been on the chase with George the Third, 
and an ancestor on his mother's side had run 
under the carriage of the Lord Mayor of 
London. 

At this point a fiery blood-hound sprang to 
his back feet, and offered the following resolu- 
tions : 

Whereas, All dogs have by nature certain 
Inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; therefore, 

Resolved, is fly, That we express our indig- 
nation at the treatment received from the 
human race. 

Resolved, idly, That to extirpate the evil, 
all dogs hereafter be allowed to vote, white and 
black, male and female. 



HOUSE OF DOGS. I97 

At this point the whole convention rose up 
into a riot. The more conservative declared 
that in this matter of suffrage everything 
depends on the color of the dog, and that as 
to the females, he thought it would be far more 
respectable if they staid at home and took care 
of the pups. 

The uproar bid fair to break up the conven- 
tion, had not a frisky canine mounted the stage, 
and in very witty style addressed the meeting. 
The crowd saw that something pleasant was 
coming, for he kept wagging his tail — indeed, 
he was a perfect wag. His speech was not 
printed, for the reporter was requested not to 
take it down," as he might want, at some other 
convention, to make the same speech. -Suffice 
it to say, the whole convention were thrown 
into good humor, and sat with the sides of their 
mouths drawn back, and their tongues out in 
perfect glee. 

Discussion of the resolutions being in order, 
butcher's dog took the stand. He complained 
that he had received nothing at the hands of 
man but cruelty and meanness. Surrounded 
as he had been always by porter-house steaks^ 
17* 



198 HOUSE OF DOGS. 

and calf's liver, and luscious shank-pieces, and 
lamb-chops, he had been kept on grisde and 
lights. In the peroration of his speech, he 
said : " Hear it, ye dogs ! Was it for this that 
we were spared in the Ark ? Better that our 
ancestors had perished in the Deluge. I care 
not what course others may take, but as for 
me, give me beefsteak, or give me death ! " 

At this point there was a scramble and a 
rush, and a very disagreeable lap - dog leaped 
upon the stand. His hair was white and curly, 
and his eyes red and watery, and his nose 
damp, and there was a blue ribbon about his 
neck. His voice was very weak, and could not 
be heard. An old mastiff shouted, " Louder ! " 
and a Newfoundland exclaimed, "Louder!'* 
And bull -dog, the presiding officer, seized 
lap - dog by the neck, and pitched him off the 
staee, for darine to come there with no orift at 
public speaking. 

A teamster's doof came forward. He had 
been for five years running under a Pennsyl- 
vania wagon. He hailed from Berks County, 
and his advantages had been limited. He was 
an anti - temperance dog, and complained that 



HOUSE OF DOGS. I99 

there were not enough taverns, for his only 
time to rest was when his master was halting 
at the inn. He had travelled many thousand 
miles in his time, worried ninety -eight cats, 
and bitten a piece out of the legs of two hun- 
dred and sixty -three beggars. He cried, 
" Down with the temperance fanatics, and up 
with more taverns ! " 

An old house-dog rose and looked round, 
and said : " My children, I am sorry to hear so 
many complaints ! I have had a good time. I 
own all the place where I live. All the children 
of my master have ridden on my back. I used 
to eat with the baby off of the same plate with- 
out any spoon. When the boy came back from 
sea, I was the first to greet him home. What 
a jolly time I had at the weddings watching the 
horses, and eating crumbs of cake. When sad 
days came to my master I cheered him up. I 
was the first to hear his step, and the last to 
part with him at the lane. I fled not when the 
black-tasselled hearse came through the gate ; 
and when the cry in the house told me that 
hearts were broken, I tapped at the door and 
went in, and laid down on the mat, and tried 



200 HOUSE OF DOGS. 

to divert my master from his woe. I am worth 
nothing now, but young and old speak kindly 
when they pass, and I have nothing to disturb 
me, save when I dream in my sleep that a hare 
is passing, and I start to take him, and a stiff- 
ness catches me in the joints." 

A erowl went throup^h the kennel. The 
speech was unpopular. They said old house- 
dog was getting childish, or they would have 
howled him down. 

The next speaker was a worn - out fighting 
doe. He had two slits in each ear, and one 
leg had been broken, and his two eyes had 
been partially dug out, and his tail abbreviated 
till it was nothing to speak of. He was covered 
with the wounds of battle, and staggered to 
the staee, and said : 

'' All the world seems to be against me. I 
am always getting into trouble. Every foot 
kicks me, every cudgel strikes me, every whif- 
fet annoys me, every tooth bites me. Pity the 
sorrows of a poor old dog ! In younger days 
I might have entered into the spirit of this 
convention, but the time is past. I shall soon 
join the dogs of Nimrod the mighty hunter. 



HOUSE OF DOGS. 20I 

This Is probably the last time I shall ever ad- 
dress the ' House of Dogs.' My hearing is 
gone, and though at this moment the applause 
of this audience may be risif!g, I hear it not. 
I go down to my grave unwept, unhonored, 
and unsung. Upon these dim eyes no vision 
of brightness shall dawn. Other tails may 
wag, but not mine. I have no tail ! It is gone 
forever ! " 

At this point the whole convention broke 
down into a whine and snuffle, and no one felt 
like lifting the spell till — 

A hunting - dog sprang to his feet, and 
broke in with a cheerful clangor of voice, 
which had in it the ring of hunters' horn, and 
call of the hawk, and gabble of wild geese, and 
the whirr of a grouse's wing, and the crack of 
the fowling-piece, and the stroke of a thunder- 
clap as it drops on the head of the Catskills on 
an August noon. He cried : 

"Why all this complaint? If you want good 
meat, why do you not hunt It down ? If you 
want sport, why do you not go where it is ? If 
you want to keep your tail, keep out of dog- 
fights ? If you would have your vision clear, 



202 HOUSE OF DOGS. 

wash your eyes In mountain dew at daybreak. 
When I want it, my master hath for me a whis- 
tle, and a patting, and a caress, and a chunk of 
cheese cut clear across from his own luncheon. 
His boys are all mine. They race with me 
down the lane. They throw apples into the 
wave for me to swim in and catch. From the 
door of my kennel I hear the shout of the 
beaux teasing the damsels by the lamplight. 
What music it is — the sound of the knife 
striking my meal from the dinner-plate ! What 
beauty — the foam flung from a moose's lips, 
the wave dashed from an elk's flank, the 
shadow dropped from a pheasant's wing, the 
wrinkled nostril of the deer snufflng the air as 
the hounds come down the wind ! Oh, ye 
house-dogs ! This world is what you make it, 
desolate or glad ! I have free house, free fare, 
the earth for a play-ground, the sky for a fres- 
coed wall, the lake for a wash-basin, the moun- 
tain mosses for a rug on which to wipe my feet. 
A first-rate world for dogs ! " 

" Silence ! " cried presiding bull-dog, " we 
came here to curse and not to bless." *' Put 
him out ! " cried the mastiff. " Put him out ! " 
cried scores of voices. And blood -hound 



HOUSE OF DOGS. 203 

plunged at hunting-dog's throat, and teamster 
rushed at the speaker with fiercer snarl than 
ever he started from under Pennsylvania wag- 
on at small boy trying to steal the lash-whip, 
and fighting - dog tumbled over the back of 
poodle in blind rage, and Tray, Blanchard, and 
Sweetheart, and Wolf, and Carlo, and Spot 
joined In the assault, till hunting-dog flew from 
the kennel, followed by a terrific volley of howls, 
roars, yelps, and bellows, that brought out the 
whole neighborhood of men with lanterns and 
torches, to find an empty kennel, save here and 
there a patch of hair, and a few broken teeth, 
and one dislocated eye, and a small piece of 
rat -terrier's ear, and a shred of blue ribbon 
from the poodle's neck, and the remaining inch 
of fighting-dog's tall which had been the only 
fragment left from previous encounters, even 
that small consolation henceforth denied him, 
and scraps of paper containing the resolutions 
which had not been passed In consequence of 
the sudden and precipitate adjournment of the 
** House of Dogs." By this time it was day- 
break, and hunting-dog had cleared his pursu- 
ers, and back of the cliffs was breakfasting on 
wild pigeon. 





PRAYER-MEETING KILLERS. 

HERE is a class of barbarians who 
roam the land, making fearful havoc. 
Th^y swing no tomahawk. They 
sound no war-whoop. But their track is 
marked by devastation. I mean that class of 
persons who go from church to church, charged 
with the mission of talking religious meetings 
to death. They are a restless tribe, generally 
disaffected with their own church, for the rea- 
son that the church can no longer endure 
them ; and then they go about, like the roaring 
lion, seeking whom they may devour. 

Though never having seen them before, I 
can tell them as soon as they enter a meeting. 
They have a brassy face, a sanctimonious way 

of rolling up their eye, a solemn snuffle, and a 

204 



PR AVER- MEETING KILLERS. 205 

pompous way of sitting down, as much as to 
say, " Here goes into the seat an awful amount 
of rehgion ! " They take off their overcoats, 
pull out the cuffs of their shirt-sleeves, give an 
impressive clearing of the throat, and wait for 
the time to seize their prey. 

The meeting is all aglow. Some old Chris- 
tian has related a melting experience, or a 
young man has asked for prayers, or a captive 
of evil habits has recounted his struggles and 
cried from the depth of an agonized heart, 
" God be merciful to me a sinner ! " Orton- 
ville has just started heavenward, taking all 
the meeting along with it. The exercises have 
come to a climax, and the minister is about to 
pronounce the benediction, or invite the seri- 
ous into an adjoining room for religious con- 
versation, when the Prayer - meeting Killer 
begins slowly to rise, his boots creaking, the 
seat in front groaning under the pressure of 
his right hand, and everything else seeming to 
give way. He confesses himself a stranger, 
but he loves prayer -meetings. He is aston- 
ished that there are not more present. He 
does not see how Christians can be so incon- 
18 



206 PRAYER- MEETING KILLERS. 

sistent. He has heard an incident diat he feels 
called upon to relate. He related it that noon 
at the Fulton Street Prayer-meeting. He re- 
lated it that afte^moon at an old people's meet- 
ing. He will relate it now in rehearsal for a 
meeting to-morrow, at which he expects to 
relate it. His voice is wooden. His eyes are 
dry as the bottom of a kettle that has been on 
a stove two hours without any water in it. 
The young people laugh, and go out one by 
one. The aged wipe the sweat ' from their 
foreheads. And the minister bemns within 
himself to recite an extemporized litany, 
" From fire, and plague, and tempest, and 
itinerant bores, deliver us ! " 

The interloper would hardly have lived 
through the night if he could not have given 
vent to this utterance. It was impossible for 
him to sit still. There was somewhere down 
in his clothes a spring which lifted him up 
inevitably. At the close of the meeting he 
waited to be congratulated on his happy re- 
marks, and went home feeling that he had 
given the world a mighty push toward the 
millennium. 



PRAYER-MEETING KILLERS, 20/ 

If such an one is notoriously inconsistent, he 
will talk chiefly on personal holiness. Perhaps 
\\^ failed rich, so that, unencumbered, he might 
give all his time to prayer-meetings. We knew 
a horse-jockey whose perpetual theme at such 
meetings was sanctification ; and he said he 
was speeding toward heaven, but on which of 
his old nags we had not time to ask him. 

One of the chiefs of this barbarian tribe of 
Prayer-meeting Killers is the expository man. 
He is very apt to rise with a New Testament 
in his hand, or there has been some passage 
that during the day has pressed heavily on his 
mind. It is probably the first chapter of Ro- 
mans, or some figurative passage from the 
Old Testament. He says, for instance : " My 
brethren, I call your attention to Hosea, 7th 
and 8th. ' Ephraim is a cake not turned.' 
You all know the history of Ephraim. 
Ephraim was — ah — well ! He was a man 
mentioned in the Bible. You all know who 
he was. Surely no intelligent audience like 
this need to be told who Ephraim was. Now 
the passage says that he was a cake not turned. 
There are a good many kinds of cake, my 



208 PR AVER- MEETING KILLERS. 

brethren ! There is the Indian cake, and the 
flannel cake, and the buckwheat cake. Now 
Ephraim was a cake not turned. It is an aw- 
ful thing not to be turned. My friends, let us 
all turn ! " 

It sometimes happens that this religious pest 
confines himself to the meetings of his own 
church. Interesting talkers are sometimes de- 
tained at home by sickness ; but his health is 
always good. Others dare not venture out in 
the storm ; but all the elements combined could 
not keep him from his place. He has the 
same prayer now that he has used for the last 
twenty years. There is in it an allusion to the 
death of a prominent individual. You do not 
understand who he means. The fact is, he 
composed that prayer about the time that 
General Jackson died, and he has never been 
able to drop the allusion. He has a patron- 
izing way of talking to sinners, as much as to 
say : " Ho ! you poor, miserable scalawags, 
just look at me, and see what you might have 
been ! " 

Oh ! I wish some enterprising showman 
would gather all these Prayer-meeting Killers 



PRAYER- MEETING KILLERS. 209 

from all our churches into a religious menage- 
rie, and let them all talk together. It would 
bring together more spectators than the Car- 
diff Giant. We will take five season tickets 
for the exhibition. Let 'these offenders be put 
by themselves, where, day in and day out, 
night in and night oyt, they may talk without 
interruption. Nothing short of an eternity of 
gab would satisfy them. What will they do in 
heaven, with nobody to exhort ? We imagine 
them now rising up in the angelic assemblage, 
proposing to make a few rejnarks. If they get 
there, you will never again hear of silence in 
heaven for the space of half an hour. 

Alas ! the land is strewn with the carcasses 
of prayer -meetings slain by these religious 
desperadoes. They have driven the young 
people from most of our devotional meetings. 
How to get rid of this affliction is the question 
with hundreds of churches. We advise your 
waiting on such persons, and telling them that, 
owing to the depraved state of public taste, 
their efforts are not appreciated. If they still 
persist, tell them they must positively stop or 

there will be trouble. If under all this they 
18* o 



2IO PRAYER- MEETING KILLERS. 

are incorrigible, collar them, and hand them 
over to the police as disturbers of religious 
assemblages. As you love the Church of God, 
put an end to their ravages. It is high time 
that the nuisance was abated. Among the 
Bornesian cannibals and Fejee Islanders I class 
this tribe of Prayer-Meeting Killers. 





RIP — RAP. 




MAN, like a book, must have an 
index. He is divided into chapters, 
sections, pages, preface, and appen- 
dix ; in size, quarto, octavo, or duodecimo, and 
bound in cloth, morocco antique, or half calf. 
The dress, the gait, the behavior are an index 
to the contents of this strange book, and give 
you the number of the page. 

But I think we may also estimate character 
by the way one knocks at the door of a house, 
or rines the bell. We have friends whose 
coming is characteristically indicated by the 
sound at the door. They think to surprise us, 
but their first touch of the door reveals the 
secret, and we rush out in the hall, crying : " I 
knew it was you ! " The greeting we receive 
at many a household is : "I knew the ring ! " 



212 RIP— RAP! 

We look with veneration at the old door- 
knocker, which, black with the stain of ele- 
ments, and telling a story of many generations, 
hangs at the entrance of the homestead. It 
has none of the frivolous jingle of a modern 
door-bell. It never jokes, but speaks in tones 
monosyllabic, earnest, solemn, and always to 
the point. In olden times, the houses were 
wide apart, and people so busy it was not more 
than once or twice a week that the old iron 
clapper sounded at all, and then it would go 
off with such sudden bang that the whole 
family jumped, and wondered who was coming 
there. 

The long-promised visit from a neighbor was 
to take place that night. The hickory-nuts were 
cracked, the cider was already in the pitcher, 
the apples were wiped, and the doughnuts 
piled up in the closet. The children sat at the 
fire waltlnor for the arrival of the quests. It 
seemed as if the visitors would never come ; 
but at last, rousing up all the echoes of hall, 
and cellar, and garret, the long- silent knocker 
went Rip — 7'ap! and there was a shaking off 
of the snow, and running up stairs with hats, 



RIP— RAP. 213 

and pulling up of chairs at the hearth, and 
snuffing of candles, and hauling out of the 
knitting-work, and loud clatter and guffaw of 
voices, some of which have for a good while 
been still. At the first clap of the knocker, 
silence fell dead. There is a very festoon of 
memories hanging on the old door. The sailor- 
boy far at sea wonders if it looks just as It used 
to when he played on the sill, and imagines 
himself standing with his hand on the knocker, 
and in his dream is startled to hear it go off, 
waking up to find that it is only an ice-glazed 
rope in the rigging, going " Rip — rap ! Rip — 
rap ! " 

The hearty, enthusiastic man always gives a 
characteristic ring. When he puts his hand on 
the knob, it seems as if the bell would go crazy. 
It flies up and down the house with racket, and 
after it seems to be about through, starts up 
again, as if it meant to apologize for stopping. 
The nurse runs down from the bedroom, and 
the cook comes up from the kitchen, and the 
children bend over the banisters, and the father, 
who was taking an afternoon nap, bounds to 
the floor, shouting: "What on earth Is the 



214 RIP— RAP! 

matter?" And you look at the clapper of the 
bell, and find it swinging yet, as if it were 
getting ready for another volley. 

When our inanimate friend comes to see us, 
he makes no disturbance. His liver has for 
several years been on a strike, and his blood 
acts as if it would have stopped circulation 
entirely, but for its respect for William Harvey. 
In his ordinary walk, each step is so undecided 
that you know not whether he is going on, or 
is about to stop and spend the evening. As 
he pulls your bell, you hear the tongue creak 
in the socket, but no decided ring. You go 
out in the hall to see if the bell is in motion. 
You wait for a more decided demonstration, 
and in about five minutes there is just one, 
little, delicate tap that lets you know the gen- 
tleman at the door is still breathing. The 
door-bell imposes on such men, and hangs idly 
about, gossiping with bedroom and parlor bells, 
and deserves to have a good shaking. 

Beggars have a characteristic knock. This 
man with a printed certificate that he was 
blown up with Vesuvius, and drowned in the 
Mississippi, and afterward killed on the New 



I 

RIP— RAP! 215 

Jersey Central, and considerably injured in 
other respects, comes against your basement- 
door with an emphasis indescribable. He feels 
that you have what belongs to him. His 
knuckles are hard by much practice. When 
he strikes your door, it means, " Stand and 
deliver ! " But some night, about ten o'clock, 
you hear something at the basement. It is a 
cold night, and you think it is only the wind 
rattling the shutters ; but after a while you 
hear it again — a faint tap, as though it were 
not made with the knuckle, but the nail of the 
little finger. You open the door, and before a 
word is returned, you read in her face : " No 
fire ! No bread for the children ! No coverlets 
to keep them warm ! No hope ! " She had 
been at a dozen doors before, but had knocked 
so softly there was no response. She did not 
dare to touch the bell lest it miorht with crarru- 
lous tongue tell all her woe. Is any one watch- 
ing that woman in the thin shawl ? Did any 
ear listen to the craunch of that woman's foot 
in the crisp snow? When she struck the nail 
of her little finger against the cold basement- 
door, was the stroke drowned by the night- 



2l6 RIP— RAP! 

wind ? No ! It sounded fardier dian the heavy 
bang of the sturdy beggar — louder than the 
clang of forge, or pounding of gauntleted fist 
of warrior at casde - gate. Against the very 
door of heaven it struck, and sounded through 
the long, deep corridors of Infinite pity : " Rip 
— rap ! Rip — rap ! " 

Children luill wake up early in the morning. 
Perhaps you have been disturbed in the night, 
and gone wandering around the room in your 
somnolent state, as much confused as ourselves 
on one occasion, when, at midnight, we heard 
a croupy cough in the nursery, and gave the 
ipecac to the wrong baby. Just as you begin 
your last morning nap, you hear a stir in the 
adjoining room. The trundle-bed is evidently 
discharging a lot of bare feet on the floor. 
You hear suppressed laughter at the door, 
slipping out into an occasional shout as one of 
them applies the force of a tickle to the bottom 
of the other's feet. You are provoked to be 
interrupted at such unseasonable hours, and 
proclaim children a nuisance. You are glad 
that the door is locked. But they ratde the 
knob. They blow through the keyhole. They 



RIP— RAP! 217 

push slips of paper under the door, and, getting 
more and more bold, they knock. Ten fingers, 
tipped with the rosy tints of the morn, are 
running races up and down the panel. Your 
indignation begins to cool, and your determi- 
nation not tO' admit is giving way. The noise 
of fingers is intermingled with the stroke of 
dimpled fists. At last you open the door, and 
there bursts in a snow-flurry of night-gowns, 
and they bound along, brunette and blonde, 
wild as young Arabs. The lock that would 
have confounded burglar, and the bolt that 
strongest hand could not have broken, flew 
open at the touch of the tip - end of a baby's 
finger. 

The roughest knock that ever strikes the 
door is a sheriff's knock as he comes to levy 
on the furniture. The gentlest knock is that 
of a comforter as she arrives to tell us of the 
good times coming. The gladdest, merriest 
ring of the door-bell is at the holiday festival, 
when six children, after long absence, come to 
the homestead, all talking at once, and asking 
questions, without waiting for answers before 
they ask more, and talking ov;er boyhood and 
19 



2l8 RIP— RAP! 

girlhood days, and bringing down the old cradle 
from the garret, and dressing up mother in her 
faded wedding-dress, and continuing to laugh, 
and cry, and kiss, and shout, and turn somer- 
saults, and cut up and cut down, till the door- 
bell is mad at the disturbance, and solemnly 
vows : " I will never ring again for such a com- 
pany as this !" And it keeps its word. Better 
each one take a leaf of the Christmas-tree, for 
it is the last one that shall ever grow in that 
house. The door - bell had told many a lie, 
pretending that some one worth seeing had 
come, but this time it told the truth. That was 
the last holiday scene in which the six mingled. 
Another bell took up the strain, but it was deep 
and slow, and the sound came down from the 
old church-belfry as though the door-bell of 
heaven had tapped at the going in of a soul. 
Not one of the six was compelled to stand, 
with weary rip - rap, banging at the celestial 
door, for the faces of their friends were pressed 
against the window, watching. And the table 
was already spread, and the pomegranates, 
piled up on the caskets, were so ripe that the 
rinds did burst at the first touch of the lip. 



RIP— RAP! 



219 



And with oldest wine of heaven, more than 
eighteen hundred years ago by two scarred 
hands pressed from grapes of Eshcol, they did 
rise up, chaUce gleaming to chalice, and drank: 
"To THE rescue!" 





THE RIGHT TRACK. 




HERE are thousands of persons In 
places where they do not belong. 
The bird's wing means air, the fish's 
fin means water, the horse's hoof means solid 
ground ; and what would happen if the bird 
tried the water, and the fish tried the air, 
happens when men get out of their naturg.1 
element. In my watch, the spring cannot ex- 
change places with the wheels, nor the cogs 
with the pivots. " Stay where I put you ! " 
cries the watchmaker, "If you want to keep 
good time ! " Now, the world Is only a big 
watch that God wound up, and the seasons are 
the hands which tell how fast the time Is oolne. 
" Stay where I put you ! " says our great Crea- 
tor. Or, If you prefer, human society Is a ship. 



THE RIGHT TRACK. 221 

Some are to go ahead ; they are the prow. 
Some are to stay behind and guide those who 
lead; they are the helm. Some are to be 
enthusiastic and carry the flag ; they are the 
masts. Some are to do nothing but act as a 
dead weight ; they are shovelled in as ballast. 
Some are to fume and fret and blow ; they are 
the valves. 

Our happiness and success depend on being 
where we belong. A scow may be admirable, 
and a seventy-four gun-ship may be admirable, 
but do not put the scow on the ocean, or the 
ship-of-the-line in a mill-pond. Fortune is 
spoken of as an old shrew, with hot water, 
shovel, and tongs, pursuing the innocent. 
But, though sometimes losing her temper, she 
mostly approves those who are in their sphere, 
and condemns those who are where they do 
not belong. 

How, then, account for the success of such 
persons as Elihu Burritt and Hugh Miller — 
the former a blacksmith, yet showing unbound- 
ed capacity for the acquisition of language ; the 
latter a stone-mason, and yet, as though he 

were one of the old buried Titans come to life, 
19* 



222 THE RIGHT TRACK. 

pressing up through rocks and mountains, un- 
til, shaking from his coat a world of red sand- 
stone, and washing off from his hands the dust 
of millions of years, he takes the professor's 
chair in a college ? We answer, different men 
want different kinds of colleees. The anvil 
was the best school-desk for Elihu Burritt, and 
quarry -stone for Hugh Miller. The former, 
among the cinders and horse -shoes, learned 
that patient toil which was the secret of his 
acquisition in the languages. The latter, from 
observations made while toiling with chisel and 
crowbar, laid the foundation of his wonderful 
attainments, one shelf of rock being worth to 
him more than the hundred shelves of a col- 
lege-library. 

Some men get into an occupation below that 
for which they are intended. They have their 
"seventy-four" in the mill-pond. They do not 
get along as well in that position as somebody 
with less brains. An elephant would make 
wretched work if you set it to hatch out goose- 
eggs, but no more wretched than a man of 
great attainments appointing himself to some 
insignificant office. 



THE RIGHT TRACK. 223 

Men are often in a position a little above 
that for which they were intended. Now the 
old scow is out on the ocean. The weights of 
a clock said : " Come ! come ! This is dull 
work down here ! I want to be the pendu- 
lum ! " But the pendulum shouted upward: 
" I 'm tired of this work ! It does not seem 
that I make any progress going backward and 
forward ! Oh ! that I were the hands ! " Un- 
der this excitement, the old clock, which had 
been going ever since the Revolutionary War, 
stopped stock-still. " What is the matter now, 
my old friend ? " says the gray-haired patriarch. 
For very shame, not a word was said, until the 
old man set it a-going. Then the striking-bell 
spoke up and said : " Nothing ! only the 
weights wanted to be the pendulum, and the 
pendulum wanted to be the hands ! " " Well ! 
well ! " said o-randfather, *' this is e^eat work ! " 
and the old man, losing his patience, gave the 
clock a gentle slap In the face, and told the 
pendulum hereafter to hold its tongue, and 
said to the weights : '' You be hanged ! " 

But how may we know If we are in our right 
place — not an inch above, not an inch below? 



224 THE RIGHT TRACK. 

If you can perform your work easily, without 
being cramped or exhausted, that is the right 
place. That man is in a horrible condition 
who is ever making prodigious effort to do 
more than he can do. It is just as easy for a 
star to swine in its orbit as for a mote to float 
in a sunbeam. Nature never sweats. The 
great law of gravitation holds the universe on 
its back as easily as a miller swings over his 
shoulder a bag of Genesee wheat. The winds 
never run themselves out of breath. The 
rivers do not weary in their course. The 
Mississippi and the Amazon are no more tired 
than the meadow -brook. Himalaya is not 
dizzy. 

Poets talk about the waters of Niagara 
being in an agony, but I think they like it. 
How they frolic and clap their hands miles 
above, as they come skipping on toward the 
great somersault, singing : " Over we go ! over 
we go ! " When the universe goes at such 
tremendous speed, and the least impediment 
might break one of the great wheels, is it not 
a wonder that we do not hear a prodigious 
crack, or thunderous bang, loud enough to 



THE RIGHT TRACK. 22$ 

make the world's knees knock together ? Yet 
a million worlds In their flight do not make as 
much noise as a honey-bee coquetting among 
the clover-tops. Every thing in nature Is just 
as easy. Now, if the position you occupy re- 
quire unnatural exertion, your only way out is 
either to take a step higher, or a step further 
down. Providence does not demand that you 
should break your back, or put your arm out 
of joint, or sprain your ankle. If you can only 
find out just what you are to do, you can do it 
perfectly easy. 

Let the young be sure to begin right. Not 
once in a thousand times does a man success- 
fully change occupations. The sea of life is 
so rough that you cannot cross over from one 
vessel to another except at great peril of falling 
between. Many have fallen down to nothing 
between the mason's trowel and the carpen- 
ter's saw ; between the lawyer's brief and the 
author's pen ; between the medicine-chest and 
the pulpit. It is no easy matter to switch off 
on another track this thundering express-train 
of life. A daffodil and a buttercup resolved to 
change places with each other, but in crossing 



226 



THE RIGHT TRACK. 



over from stem to stem, they fell at the feet of 
a heart's -ease. "Just as I expected!" said 
Heart's -ease. "You might better have staid 
in your places ! " 





RIDING r H K HORSE TO T! R O 1 




h^^ 




RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 

'N these days, if a boy would go a 
horsebacking, he must have gay 
caparison— saddle of the best leather, 
stirrups silvered, martingales bestarred, hous- 
ing flamboyant, tasselled whip, jingling spurs, 
gauntleted hands, and crocodile boots able to 
swallow him to above the knee. 

But we are persuaded that is not the best 
way for a boy to ride. About seven o'clock 
in the morning, the farm - horses having had 
oats and currying, must be taken to the brook 
for the watering. The halter is caught into a 
half hitch around the horse's nose, and, bring- 
ing him to the fence, the boy leaps astride. It 
is no rare occurrence that, in his avidity to get 

aboard, the boy slides off on the other side of 

227 



228 RIDING THE H^RSE TO BROOK. 

the animal, and It is fortunate if the latter, 
taking advantage of the miscalculation, does 
not fly away with a wild snort, finding his way 
to the brook. 

But once thoroughly mounted, the rope- 
halter is helm and sail sufficient. It is very 
easy to guide a thirsty horse when you want 
to take him to water. A poke of your bare 
feet into his ribs, and a strong pull of the rope, 
are enough to bring him back from any slight 
divergencies. Passing through the bars, all 
you have to do is to gather up your feet on 
his warm, smooth back, and having passed the 
post, again drop anchor. Nothing looks more 
spirited or merry than a boy's feet bouncing 
against the sides of a glistening bay. The 
horse feels them, and the more briskly gallops 
down the lane. 

At his first plunge into the brook, his sudden 
stop would have sent the boy somersaulting Into 
the stream, but for a quick digging of the heels 
into the side, and a clutch of the scant lock of 
hair at the end of the mane. With lip and 
nostril in the stream, the horse cares nothine 
for what his young rider wills. There may be 



RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 229 

a clearer place below that the boy chooses for 
the watering, but the horse lifts not his head to 
the shout, or the jerk of halter, or stroke in 
the flanks. He wants to drink just there ; 
intent upon that are mouth, and gullet, and 
fetlock, and spot in the face. Sitting astride, 
the boy feels the jerk of each swallow, and 
sees the accompanying wag of the pony's ears. 
The horse lifts his head, takes a long breath, 
clashes his teeth, and rinsing his jaws, drops 
the tuft of hay that lingered in his mouth, with 
right foot paws up the gravel from beneath, 
giving notice that he is ready, if you are, throws 
himself back on his hind feet till his front lift 
from the mud, gives a quick turn, and starts 
for the barn. In a minute he has made the 
length of the lane, and stands neighing for the 
barn-door to open. 

This ride was the chief event of the day. 
Alas, if there are only two horses, when there 
are four boys ! for two of them are disap- 
pointed, and keep their grudge for the most 
of the day. You linger about the barn for 
hours, and pat Pompey on the nose, and get 
astride his back in the stable, and imagine 



230 RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 

how it would be if it were only time to ride 
him down again. 

We would like to have in our photograph- 
album a picture of the horses that in boyhood 
we rode to the watering. Sitting here, think- 
ing of all their excellencies, we forgive them 
for all the times they threw us off. The temp- 
tation was too great for them, and the mud 
where we fell was soft. The dear old pets ! 
One of them was sold, and as he was driven 
away we cried such large tears, and so many 
of them, that both coat-sleeves were insufficient 
to sop up the wretchedness. Another broke 
its leg, and it was taken to the woods and shot. 
We went into the house and held our ears, lest 
we should hear the cruel bang that announced 
the departure of our favorite sorrel. Another 
staid on the place, and was there when we left 
home. He was always driven slowly, had 
grown uncertain of foot, and ceased to prance 
at any sight or sound. You could no longer 
make him believe that a wheelbarrow was any- 
thing supernatural, nor startle him by shaking 
out a buffalo - skin. He had outlived all his 
contemporaries. Some had frisked out a 



RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 23I 

frivolous life, and had passed away. Some 
had, after a life of kicking and balking, come 
to an ignomrnious end ; but old Billy had lived 
on in an earnest way, and every Sunday morn- 
ing stood at the door waiting for the family to 
get in the wagon and ride to church. Then 
he would jog along seriously, as if conscious 
that his church privileges would soon be gone. 
In the long line of tied horses beside the 
church, he would stand and listen to the songs 
inside. While others stamped, and beat the 
flies, and got their feet over the shafts, and 
slipped the halter, and bit the nag on the other 
side of the tongue, Billy had more regard for 
the day and place, and stood silent, meditative, 
and decorous. If there be any better place 
than this world for good horses, Billy has gone 
there. He never bolted ; he never kicked. 
In ploughing, he never put his foot over the 
trace ; he never balked ; he never put back 
his ears and squealed. A good, kind, faithful, 
honest, industrious horse was he. He gave us 
more joy than any ten-thousand-dollar courser 
could crive us now. No arched stallion career- 
ing on Central Park, or foam - dashed Long 



232 RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 

Island racer, could dirill us like die memory 
of diat family roadster. 

Alas, for boys in die city, who never ride a 
horse to brook ! An afternoon airing in ruffles, 
stiff and starched, and behind a costumed 
driver, cannot make up for this early disad- 
vantage. The best way to start life is astride 
a farm-horse, with a rope-halter. In that way 
you learn to rough it. You are prepared for 
hard bounces on the road of life ; you learn to 
hold on ; you get the habit of depending on 
your own heels, and not upon other people's 
stirrups ; you find how to climb on without 
anybody to give you a boost. It does not hurt 
you so much when you fall off And some 
day, far on in life, when you are in the midst 
of the hot and dusty city, and you are weary 
with the rush and din of the world, in your 
imagination you call back one of these nags of 
pleasant memory. You bring him up by the 
side of your study, or counting-room table, 
and from that you jump on, and away you 
canter through the old - time orchard, and by 
the old-time meeting-house, or down the lane 
in front of the barn, dashing into the cool, 



RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. 233 

sparkling water of the meadow, where he stops 
to take his morning dram ; or you hitch him up 
to thfi rocking - chair in which you have for 
twenty years sat rheumatic and helpless, and 
he drags you back some Sunday morning to 
the old country church, where many years ago 
he stood tied to the post, while you, with father 
and mother at either end of the pew, was learn- 
ing of the land where there is no pain, and into 
which John looked, and said : " I saw a white 
horse!" 




20* 





CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 

HERE has somehow arisen a strong 
prejudice against the above phase 
of country Hfe, and no one has ap- 
peared as its champion. It is slung down 
among diseases, and denounced as though 
nothing might be said in its favor. For some 
inexphcable reason, people say nothing of it 
till they have sold their place. We confess 
ourselves that while we owned our farm we 
had a tendency to call it a " bilious attack," or 
a " trouble of the liver," or an " intermittent." 
We estimate as amonor the most interestinor 
periods of our life the season when we were 
attacked with it. If there were any advantages 
to be derived, we certainly derived them. It 
was a matter of some doubt whether we had 

234 



CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 235 

the chills or the chills had us ; but one warm 
summer afternoon it was decided in our favor. 
If the people who are longing for a new sensa- 
tion would only try this ! It is a different feel- 
ing from that which a man has on any other 
occasion. Is^ it not strange that there is so 
much practical ignorance on this subject when 
the chills may be so easily taken ? You need 
go no long journey to obtain them. Just wheel 
your arm-chair to the piazza some June night, 
or walk along the marsh at dusk, or ride out 
on a damp evening without an overcoat, and 
you have them as thoroughly as many a man 
who has gone to greater expense. Nay, some 
places are so well adapted to them that without 
any use of means at all you may win the prize. 
Chills and fever are entirely unselfish. If a 
man gets the quinsy sore-throat, or a boil on 
his back, he is apt to monopolize the entire 
entertainment ; but in the case of which I speak, 
your family may join you. If the one shakes, 
they may all shake. If the one looks blue 
around the finger-nails, they may all look blue 
around the fineer-nails. 

You begin without any apparent reason to 



236 CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED, 

feel very tired, awfully tired. You become 
seriously aware that you have a great many 
bones, and are convinced that your limbs have 
a great superfluity of ossification. You begin 
to yawn till any chicken with the gapes would 
think you were caricaturing the diseases of the 
barn-yard You stretch, without any seeming 
idea as to what you are putting out your hands 
for. You button up one button of your coat. 
You walk round the house, and then fasten 
two buttons. You walk up stairs, and fasten 
all the buttons. You lie down on the clean 
white spread, boots and all. Your wife, after 
criticizing your taste in going to bed with boots 
on, puts on you all the blankets she can find ; 
and you shout, '' More cover ! " She hunts up 
all the shawls, and piles them up in woollen 
pyramid. She gets out two or three old dresses, 
and puts them on ; and you cry, " Give us more 
cover ! " Considerably frightened, she lays on 
the top of the pile her best dresses. She puts 
on the top of this the children's clothes, and 
then gives solidity to the mass by adding two 
pillows ; and through your chattering teeth you 
exclaim, " More cover ! " You feel that you 



CHILLS AND FEVER l^INDICATED. 237 

are making the Arctic expedition in search of 
John Franklin, and that the friendly Esquimaux 
are rubbing you down with a couple of small 
icebergs. Your tongue is a hailstone, and 
your nose an icicle. 

. By this time the stomach becomes like the 
Stock Exchange, with all the breakfasts you 
ever ate trying each to bid the highest, after a 
while throwing all the securities flat on the 
market. You save a thousand dollars by get- 
ting seasick, without the experiences and perils 
of an ocean expedition. You feel as if you 
must have swallowed something that was going 
toward Tarshish, when it ought to have been 
going toward Nineveh. You wonder what has 
got into you ; and make up your mind that it 
must be more Esquimaux riding up and down 
behind ten dogs fastened to sledges. 

Suddenly the climate changes from Arctic to 
Torrid. Your wife lifts the two pillows ; but 
still you are too hot, and your wife takes off 
the layer of children's clothes. But by this 
time you are like a buried Titan, and away fly 
off from your struggling limbs the tertiary, 
cretaceous, carboniferous, and calciferous strata 



238 CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 

of old dresses and new dresses, shawls and 
blankets. You wonder why a big blanket is 
called " a comfortable." You want air. You 
want fans. You have an oven In your head, 
three cooking-stoves under your diaphragm ; 
and if one earns bread by the sweat of his 
brow, you have shed enough perspiration to 
buy out several bakeries. You chew ice, and 
squeeze lemons, and dramatize the ague ; and 
then lie four hours in silence, meditating on 
the pleasures of life in the country, with fine 
river- prospect. 

The ague is not at all disquieting after you 
get sufficiently used to it. The trouble with 
us was, not that we had the ague, but that we 
did not keep the place long enough to get used 
to it. We have no patience with those plain, 
matter-of-fact people who can see no poetry in 
the ague. They have no appreciation of any 
great physical enterprise. They run for qui- 
nine, or Deshler's pills, or India Cholagogue, 
to get rid of that about which many have 
wondered, but died without the sight. 

We have it to boast that, while some of our 
neighbors beat us in the size of their turnips, 



CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 239 

and the flavor of their strawberries, we beat 
them all in the shakes. Indeed, none of them 
had the chills ; they were only troubled with 
"bilious attack," or "intermittent symptoms." 
Indeed, we never saw in all that region any 
man who had a fair " out - and - out" attack of 
chills and fever, except ourselves. We went 
in to sympathize with our neighbor, afflicted 
just as we had been. He said nothing much, 
but looked cadaverous ; did not seem to have 
much animation ; gaped nine times during our 
visit; thought it was a remarkably healthy 
neighborhood, and got up and put on two over- 
coats, but said he did not feel chilly ; raised 
both hands as if to strike us to the floor, 
making us feel like crying out, " My dear sir, 
what have I done to offend you ?" but were re- 
lieved by finding that he was only stretching 
himself. 

It may be a recommendation for this physical 
luxury to those who like permanency and fixed- 
ness that this is not like many of the acquisi- 
tions of earth, transitory and evanescent. 
Once get it, and you need have no fear of 
losing it. It is like the widow's cruse of oil — 



240 CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 

it never falls. We knew a Western pastor 
who had it for fifteen years, and we saw him 
sitting in ecclesiastical council one day taking 
a chill as naturally as the Heidelberg Catechism. 
He looked as if he were gnashing his teeth at 
heterodoxy ; but he was only chattering be- 
cause he was chilly. 

One of the or^and moral arguments in favor 

o o 

of the ague is the fact that it clothes one with 
the exquisite grace of humility. Nothing like 
the shakes to make a man abhor himself He 
would be willing to sell himself for a low price, 
and take his pay in parsley and onions. He 
sinks in his own estimation, till in the com- 
parison he considers the mouse to be a very 
noble animal, and sits down on the porch, not 
wanting to be spoken to, and hurls a brick at 
the cat for making fun of him. 

Another thing in favor of this institution is 
that when you have it you are insured for the 
time being against any disease. We should 
like to see a man try to get the croup or the 
mumps at the time this is on him. It monopo- 
lizes a man's entire attention. He has no time 
for anything else. He shakes off everything 



CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 24 1 

irrelevant. Who will say that this concentra- 
tion of a man's attention on one thing is not a 
valuable mental discipline ? He can think of 
nothing else. It is equal in this respect to a 
regular course of mathematics. Indeed, the 
mere matter of counting the shakes gives him 
a sum in simple addition ; and, as he finds his 
strength being taken away, he goes into sub- 
traction, and tests the rule of three by calcu- 
latlne if he shakes as hard as this In one attack, 
how much he will shake in three. By this time 
he gets into algebra, and finds out that a chill 
plus a fever, plus quinine, plus India Chola- 
gogue, plus Ayer's Antidote, plus boneset tea, 
plus enlargement of the spleen, plus the doc- 
tor's bill, Is equal to ten fits. But the ague 
patient rises to still higher mathematics ; and, 
during one of the attacks on the bed, describes 
with his body an equilateral polygon, and sits 
up, taking hold his feet till he Is turned Into a 
hypotenuse, and gets his body so thoroughly 
mixed up and out of place that he proves that 
the rectangle contained by the diagonals of a 
quadrilateral Inscribed in a circle is equivalent 
to the sum of the rectangles of the opposite 



242 CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 

sides ; and winds up his mathematical exercises 
hy pons asinorum, and a fever deHrium, in which 
he sees EucHd dancing about with an epicycloid 
around his neck, and a parallelopiped on his 
back, and a whole class of college freshmen 
hanging on to his coat- tail. Now, if there be 
such mathematical drill in chills and fever, why 
not have our colleges and young ladies' semi- 
naries removed from the inland regions, and 
set the buildings down where they shall have 
a river-front? 

But chills and fever would not be well vindi- 
cated did we not say that they always make 
business lively. Not only is the patient very 
active at times ; but there Is lively work for 
druggists, doctors, and after a while for enter- 
prising undertakers. For months we made 
daily pilgrimage to the apothecary. You want 
to begin with anti-bilious pills. Then you want 
a febrifuge. Then you want a tonic. All this 
falling, then you want a physician ; then, utterly 
depressed, you want a minister ; and after that 
you don't know what you want ; but before you 
have been long In the perplexity of not know- 
ing what you want, you have another chill, and 



CHILLS AND FEVER VINDICATED. 243 

then the perplexity Is over, for you decide that 
your want is — more cover. 

All these wants make lively markets. When 
you have nothing else to take your attention, 
you have the buzzing in your ear that comes 
from large doses of quinine. This noise is 
like an oecumenical council of bees, and has a 
poetic and rhydimic effect in reminding you of 
that delightful refrain, " How doth the busy bee 
improve each shining hour!" 

Oh that all the world lived in the country, 
and that every house had a river- front ! 





GHOSTS. 




T is difficult to escape from early- 
superstitions. You reason against 
them, and are persuaded that they 
are unworthy of a man of common sense ; and 
yet you cannot shake them off. You heard 
fifty years ago that Friday was an unlucky day. 
You know better. You recollect that on 
Friday Luther and William Penn were born, 
and the Stamp Act was repealed, and the 
Hudson River discovered, and Jamestown 
settled, and the first book printed. Yet you 
have steered clear of Friday. You did not 
commence business on Friday. You did not 
get married on Friday. You would not like it if 
the Governor of the State proclaimed Thanks- 
giving for Friday. The owners of steamships 

244 



GHOSTS. 245 

are intelligent men, but their vessels do not 
start on Friday. 

If early superstitions were implanted in your 
mind, you do not like to return to the house to 
get anything when you have once started on a 
journey. Perhaps you are careful how you 
count the carriages at a funeral. You prefer 
to see the new moon over the right shoulder. 
Though you know there is nothing in the story 
of ghosts which your nurse or some one about 
the old place used to tell you, yet you would a 
little rather not rent a house that has the repu- 
tation of being haunted ; and when called to go 
by a country grave-yard after twelve o'clock at 
night, you start an argument to prove that you 
are not afraid. 

We never met but one ghost in all our life. 
It was a very dark night, and we were seven 
years of age. There was a German cooper, 
who, on the outskirts of the village, had a shop. 
It was an interesting spot, and we frequented 
it. There was a congregation of barrels, kegs, 
casks, and firkins, that excited our boyish ad- 
miration. There the old man stood day after 
day, hammering away at his trade. He was 



246 GHOSTS. 

fond of talk, and had his head full of all that 
was weird, mysterious, and tragic. During the 
course of his life he had seen almost as many 
ghosts as firkins ; had seen them in Germany, 
on the ocean, and in America. 

One summer afternoon, perhaps having 
made an unusually lucrative bargain in hoop- 
poles, the tide of his discourse bore everything 
before it. We hung on his lips entranced. 
We noticed not that the shadows of the even- 
ing were gathering, nor remembered that we 
were a mile from home. He had wrought up 
our boyish imagination to the tip - top pitch. 
He had told us how doors opened when there 
was no hand on the latch, and the eyes of a 
face in a picture winked one windy night ; and 
how intangible objects in white would glide 
across the room, and headless trunks rode past 
on phantom horses ; and how boys on the way 
home at night were met by a sheeted form, that 
picked them up and carried them off, so that 
they never were heard of, their mother going 
around as disconsolate as the woman in the 
"Lost Heir," crying, "Where's Billy?" 

This last story roused us up to our where- 



GHOSTS. 247 

abouts, and we felt we must go home. Our 
hair, that usually stood on end, took the strictly 
perpendicular. Our flesh crept with horror 
of the expedition homeward. Our faith in 
everything solid had been shaken. We be- 
lieved only in the subtile and in the intangible. 
What could a boy of seven years old depend 
upon if one of these headless horsemen might 
any moment ride him down, or one of these 
sheeted creatures pick him up ? 

We started up the road. We were barefoot. 
We were not impeded by any useless apparel. 
It took us no time to get under way. We felt 
that if we must perish, it would be well to get 
as near the doorsill of home as possible. We 
vowed that, if we were only spared this once 
to get home, we would never again allow the 
night to catch us at the cooper's. The ground 
flew under our feet. No headless horseman 
could have kept up. Not a star was out. It 
was the blackness of darkness. We had made 
half the distance, and were in " the hollow " — 
the most lonely and dangerous part of the 
way — and felt that in a minute more we might 
abate our speed and take fuller breath. But, 



248 GHOSTS. 

alas ! no such good fortune awaited us. Sud- 
denly our feet struck a monster — whether 
beastly, human, infernal, or supernal, witch, 
ghost, demon, or headless horseman, we could 
not immediately tell. We fell prostrate, our 
hands passing over a hairy creature ; and, as 
our head struck the ground, the monster rose 
up, throwing our feet into the air. To this day 
it would have been a mystery, had not a fearful 
bellow revealed it as a cow, which had lain 
down to peaceful slumber in the road, not 
anticipating the terrible collision. She wasted 
no time, but started up the road. We, having 
by experiment discovered which end of us was 
up, joined her in the race. We knew not but 
that it was the first instalment of disasters. 
And, therefore, away we went, cow and boy ; 
but the cow beat. She came into town a hun- 
dred yards ahead. I have not got over it yet, 
that I let that cow beat. 

That was the first and last ghost we ever 
met. We made up our minds for all time to 
come that the obstacles in life do not walk on 
the wind, but have either two legs or four. 
The only ghosts that glide across the room 



GHOSTS. 249 

are those of the murdered hours of the past. 
When the door swings open without any hand, 
we send for the locksmith to put on a better 
latch. Sheeting has been so high since the 
war, that apparitions will never wear it again. 
Friday is an unlucky day only when on it we 
behave ill. If a salt-cellar upset, it means no 
misfortune, unless you have not paid for the 
salt. Spirits of the departed have enough 
employment in the next world to keep them 
from cutting up monkey-shines in this. Better 
look out for cows than for spooks. 

Here is a man who starts out in a good 
enterprise. He makes rapid strides. He will 
establish a school. He will reform inebriates. 
He will establish an asylum for the destitute. 
The enterprise is under splendid headway. 
But some lazy, stupid man, holding large place 
in community, defeats the project. With his 
wealth and influence he opposes the move- 
ment. He says the thing cannot be done. 
He does not want it done. He will trip it up; 
and so the great hulk of obesity lies down 
across the way. His stupidity and beastliness 
succeed. The cow beat I 



250 GHOSTS. 

A church would start out on a grand career 
of usefulness. They are tired of husks, and 
chips, and fossils. The wasted hands of dis- 
tress are stretched up for help. The harvest 
begins to lodge for lack of a sickle. A pillar 
of fire with baton of lieht marshals the host. 
But some church official, priding himself on 
aristocratic association, and holding prominent 
pew, says : " Be careful ! preserve your dig- 
nity. I am opposed to such a democratic reli- 
gion ! Heaven save our patent - leathers ! " 
And, with mind stuffed with conceit and body 
stuffed with high living, he lies down across 
the road. The enterprise stumbles and falls 
over him. He chews the cud of satisfaction. 
The cow beat ! 

I know communities where there are scores 
and hundreds of enterprising men ; but some 
man in the neighborhood holds a large amount 
of land, and he will not sell. He has balked 
all progress for thirty years. The shriek of a 
steam-whistle cannot wake him up. The live- 
liest sound he wants to hear is a fisherman's 
horn coming round with lobsters and clams. 
His land is wanted for a school ; but he has 



GHOSTS. 251 

always thrived without learning, and inwardly 
thinks education a bad thing. At his funeral 
the spirit of resignation will be amazing to 
tell of While he lives he will lie down across 
the path of all advancement. Public enter- 
prises, with light foot, will come bounding on, 
swift as a boy in the night with ghosts after 
him ; but only to turn ignominious somersault 
over his miserable carcass. The cow beat ! 





DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS. 




HERE is a fearful mortality among 
periodicals. An epidemic has broken 
out which has brouQ-ht to the last 
gasp many of the dailies, weeklies, and month- 
lies. During the last few weeks, scores of 
these have died of cholera infantum. Only a 
little while ago, they came forth with flaming 
prospectus and long list of eminent contrib- 
utors ; but the places that knew them once 
know them no more. 

Men succeeding- in nothine else have con- 
eluded it to be a providential indication that 
they should publish a paper. Many hundreds 
of thousands of dollars have been sunk, and 
every issue of the majority of the temperance, 
Sunday-school, religious, and political papers 

252 



DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS. 253 

of the country is a plunge into debt from 
which they are hoping- some purchaser will lift 
them out. It is a constant question in the 
community where religious newspapers go to 
when they die ? We know where the basely 
partisan go to, without asking. 

The mania is fearful. Many of our literary 
friends are uneasy till they have invested their 
last five thousand dollars in printer's ink. 
Nine-tenths of them may whistle for their 
money ; but the dog will not come back, hav- 
ing found out some other master. Why all 
this giving up of the ghost among news- 
papers ? 

Some of them died for lack of being anath- 
ematized. Nothlnof ever succeeds in this 
country without being well cursed. If a man, 
or book, or periodical go forth unassaulted, 
ruin is nio-h. There is nothincr diat so de- 
cidedly lifts a thing up before the public gaze 
as the end of a bayonet. The neutral paper 
almost always fails, because It clears the scorn 
of parties and churches. Kicks and cuffs are 
an indispensable inheritance. The more val- 
uable the quarry, the more frequent the blast- 
22 



254 DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS. 

ing. You cannot make wine without the 
crushing of the clusters. The most success- 
ful periodicals of the day are those that have 
been most violently hounded. 

Some of these papers died for lack of brains. 
A man may plead law or preach the gospel 
with less intellect than is required for the con- 
duct of a paper. The editor must understand 
something of everything. He wants more 
than a scissors and a botde of mucilage. If 
he merely retail the ideas of others, the public 
will prefer to go up and get the thing at the 
wholesale establishment. He must be able, 
with strong and entertaining pen, to discuss 
governments, religions, educational enterprises, 
social changes, books, amusements, men, insti- 
tutions, everything. He must have strength 
to take a thought on the end of his pen and 
fling It a thousand miles, till It strikes within 
an inch of the point at which he aimed it. 

Lack of capital has thrown others. Ink, 
paper, press, type, printers, editorial salaries, 
contributors' fees, postal expenses, rent, ma- 
chinery, necessary repairs, are taking down 
many large fortunes. The literary enterprise 



DEATH OP NEWSPAPERS. 255 

is often crushed under Its own cylinders, Is 
drowned in Its own Ink, is chewed up with Its 
own type, is shrouded In Its own paper, has its 
epitaph In Its own columns. The wider the 
circulation of the illy-managed newspaper, the 
more certain the doom. He who attempts 
to publish a paper without pockets full of 
ready cash, publishes his own discomfiture. 
Call on the witness-stand the hundreds of men 
who are now settling up the bills for their ex- 
tinct newspaper. Every mail brings to us the 
parting bow of retiring publishers, with pockets 
turned wrong-side out, from which hungry cred- 
itors are trying to milk out another shilling. 
Many of them have died of lack of room. At 
this very time we have so many good re- 
ligious papers on our table, we think we shall 
once in a while have to take up the London 
Punch to keep ourselves enough worldly to 
attend to our secular duties. We fear that 
some of these religious papers will eat each 
other up, so that there will be nothing left of 
them save a few remaining columns of adver- 
tised medicines and shaving-soap. New York 
city has ten evening papers; the number of 



256 DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS. 

morning papers no one has had time to count. 
We wish them all success ; but it would cer- 
tainly be wise if the three hundred new pe- 
riodicals which are about to be started would 
look before they leap. 

We wonder not at the ambition that aims 
for the editorial chair. All other modes of 
affecting the public mind are narrow and 
weak compared with it. The pen is the lever 
that moves the world, and the ink-roller of the 
printing-press the battering-ram that smites 
into the dust the walls of ignorance and sin. 
But the press is a strong team to drive ; and 
one must be sure of the harness and the 
wheels, or, coming along a steep place, there 
will be a capsize, and a wreck from under 
which the literary adventurers w^ill not have 
strength to draw themselves. Phaeton's at- 
tempt to drive the chariot of the sun ended in 
a grand smash-up. 





CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 

KECAUSE a man is wise in some 
places, we are not to conclude that 
he is wise everywhere. You find 
men grandly successful in the counting-room 
and at the board of trade, whose common- 
sense forsakes them as they cross the city 
limits. 

During the last few years, a multitude of 
men have left town for country life, with the 
idea that twenty thousand dollars, and a few 
books on agriculture, would make them suc- 
cessful farmers. They will take the prizes at 
the county fair. They will have the finest 
cattle, the most af^uent hens, the most reason- 
able ducks, and the most cleanly swine. Their 
receipts will far outrun their expenses. The 



22* 



257 



258 CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 

first year they are disappointed. The second 
year they collapse. The third year they tack 
to a post the sign, ''For Sale!'' They knew 
not that agriculture Is a science and a trade, 
and that a farmer miofht as well come In with 
his carpet-bag, set It down In the engineer's 
room of a Liverpool steamer, expecting In ten 
minutes to start the machinery, and success- 
fully guide the vessel across the Atlantic, as 
one, knowing nothing of country life, to under- 
take to engineer the intricate and outbranching 
affairs of a large farm. As well set the milk- 
maid to write a disquisition on metaphysics, a 
rag-picker to lecturing on aesthetics. 

The city fool hastens out at the first beck of 
pleasant weather. He wishes to sit in what 
poets call " the lap of spring." We have our- 
selves sat, several times, in her lap, and pro- 
nounce her the roug^hest nurse that ever had 
anything to do with us. Through March, April, 
and May, for the last few years, the maiden 
seems to have been out of patience, and she 
blows, and frets, and spits In your face with 
storm, till, seemingly exhausted with worri- 
ment, she lies down at the feet of June. 



CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 259 

The family of the city fool are, for the first 
ten days after going into the country, kept in 
the house by bad weather. It is the Paradise 
of mud. The soft ground, enraptured with the 
dainty feet of the city belle, takes their photo- 
graph all up and down the lane, and secures 
its pay by abstracting one of her overshoes up 
by the barn, and the other by the woods. Mud 
on the dress. Mud on the carriage -wheels. 
Mud on the door-step. A very carnival of 
mud ! 

The city fool has great contempt for ordinary 
stock, and talks only of " high bloods." His 
cattle are all Ayrshires, or Shorthorns, or Dev- 
ons. But for some reason, they do not give 
half as much milk as the awkward, unheraldic, 
mongrel breed that stand at nightfall looking 
through the neighbor's bars. 

The poultry of our hero are Golden Ham- 
burgs, and Buff Dorkings, and Bengaliers, and 
Cropple-crowns, and Black Polands and Chitta- 
prats. But they are stingy of laying, and not- 
withstanding all the inducements of expensive 
coop, and ingenious nests, and handsome sur- 
soundings, are averse to any practical or useful 



26o CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 

expression. They eat, and drink, and cackle, 
and do everything but lay. You feed them 
hot mush, and throw lime out of which they 
are to make the shell, and strew ashes to kill 
the lice, and call on them by all the glorious 
memory of a distinguished ancestry to do 
something worthy of their name, but all in 
vain. Here and there an ^g%, dropped in the 
mud in preference to the appointed place, gives 
you a specimen of what they might do if they 
only willed. We owned such a hen. We had 
given an outrageous price for her. We lav- 
ished on that creature every possible kindness. 
Though useless, she made more noise than all 
the other denizens of the barn -yard, and, as 
some faithful hen came from her nest, would 
join in the cackle, as much as to say, "Ain't 
we doinor well ? " We came to hate the sifjht 
of that hen. She knew it well, and as she saw 
us coming, would clear the fence with wild 
squawk, as if her conscience troubled her. We 
would not give one of our unpretending Domi- 
nies for three full-blooded Chittaprats. 

The city fool expects, with small outlay, to 
have bewitching shrubbery, and a very Fon- 



CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 261 

tainebleau of shade -trees, and pagodas, and 
summer-houses, and universal arborescence. 
He will be covered up widi clematis and 
weigelia. The paths, white-gravelled, innocent 
of weeds or grass, and round - banked, shall 
wind about the house, and twist themselves into 
all unexpectedness of beauty. If he cannot 
have a Chatsworth Park, nine miles in cir- 
cumference, he will have something that will 
make you think of it. And all this will be 
kept in order with a few strokes of scythe, hoe, 
and trimming-knife. 

The city fool selects his country place with- 
out reference to socialities. He will bring a 
pocket-full of papers from the store, which will 
be all his family will want to know of society 
and the world ; and then a healthy library, from 
which shall look down all the historians and 
poets, will give them a surfeit of intellectuali- 
ties. He does not know why his wife and 
daughters want to go back to town. What 
could be more gay ? Market- wagons passing 
the door, and farmers going with grist to the 
mill, and an occasional thunder-storm to keep 
things lively, and the bawling of the cow 



262 CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 

recently bereft of her calf. Coming home 
besweated from the store, at night, the father 
finds the females crying on the piazza. What 
better concert do they want than the robins ? 
What livelier beaux than the hedges of syrin- 
ga ? With a very wail of wo they cry out to 
the exasperating husband and father : 

" We want to see something ! " 

"Good gracious ! " he shouts, "go forth and 
look at the clouds, and the grass, and the 
Southdowns ! one breath of this evening air is 
worth all the perfumes of fashionable society! " 

There is apt to be disappointment in crops. 
Even a stupid turnip knows a city fool as soon 
as it sees him. Marrow -fat peas fairly rattle 
in their pods with derision as he passes. The 
fields are glad to impose upon the novice. 
Wandering too near the beehive with a book 
on honey-making, he got stung in three places. 
His cauliflowers turn out to be cabbages. The 
thunder spoils his milk. The grass-butter, that 
he dreamed of, is rancid. The taxes eat up his 
profits. The drought consumes his corn. The 
rust gets in his wheat. The peaches drop off 
before they ripen. The rot strikes the pota- 



CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 263 

toes. Expecting to surprise his benighted city- 
friends with a present of a few early vegetables,' 
he accidentally hears that they have had new 
potatoes, and green peas, and sweet corn for a 
fortnight. The bay mare runs away with the 
box-wagon. His rustic gate gets out of order. 
His shrubbery is perpetually needing the 
shears. It seems almost impossible to keep 
the grass out of the serpentine walks. A cow 
gets in and upsets the vase of flowers. The 
hogs destroy the watermelons, and the gar- 
dener runs off with the chamber-maid. Every- 
thing goes wrong, and farming is a failure. It 
always is 3. failure when a man knows nothing 
about it. If a man can afford to make a large 
outlay for his own amusement, and the health 
of his family, let him hasten to his country 
purchase. But no one, save a city fool, will 
think to keep a business in town, and make a 
farm financially profitable. 

There are only two conditions in which farm- 
ing pays. The first, v/hen a man makes agri- 
culture a lifetime business, not yielding to the 
fatal itch for town which is depopulating the 
country, and crowding the city with a multitude 



264 CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 

of men standing Idle widi dieir hands in their 
own or their neighbors' pockets. The other 
condition, is when a citizen with surplus of 
means, and weary of the excitements and 
confinements of city life, goes to the country, 
not expecting a return of dollars equal to the 
amount disbursed, but expects. In health, and 
recreation, and communion with nature, to find 
a wealth compared with which all bundles of 
scrip and packages of Government securities 
are w^orthless as the shreds of paper under 
the counting- room desk in the waste-basket. 
Only those who come out of the heats of the 
town, know the full enchantment of country 
life. Three years ago, on the prongs of a long 
fork, with which we tossed the hay Into the 
mow, we pitched away our last attack of " the 
blues." We can beat back any despondency 
we ever knew with a hoe -handle. Born and 
brought up in the country, we have, ever since 
we left it, been loneine to ^o back, though 
doomed for most of the time to stay In town. 
The most rapturous lay of poet about country 
life has never come up to our own experiences. 
Amonor the orrandest attractions about the 

o o 



CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. 265 

Heavenly City are the trees, and the rivers, 
and the white horses. When we had a place 
in the country, the banquet lasted all summer, 
beginning with cups of crocus, and ending 
with glowing tankards of autumnal leaf. At 
Belshazzar's feast the knees trembled for the 
finger that wrote doom, but the hand-writing 
on our wall was that of honeysuckle and 
trumpet-creeper. 




23 





SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS OF 
WATERING-PLACES. 

LL the world may be divided into two 
classes — those who g^o to waterincr- 

o o 

places, and those who wish they could. 
In summer, the unemployed trunks, valises, and 
carpet-bags up in the attic, swell with envy 
until they almost burst their straps, pry off their 
lids, or demolish their buckles, as the express- 
wagons rattle the street, piled up with baggage 
marked for Lake George, Newport, or Clifton 
Springs. If the " castle in the air " that many 
of our business-men are building should alight, 
it would probably come down on the Beach, or 
at the Springs. Give me fifteen glasses of fresh 
Congress water before breakfast, or I die ! 

For tens of thousands of our people the 

266 



SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS, ETC. 26/ 

most delectable event in their home-life is their 
going away. Nothing must interfere with this. 
Papa's business may have been poor during 
the year, and every dollar may be necessary to 
keep the firm from a capsize, but walk the 
beach with the Hardings they ought, climb 
Mount Washington they must, sip sulphur 
water they will. 

There are three orders of American nobility. 
To the highest belong those who spend all the 
summer away. Give them full swing ! Feel 
honored if they tread on your corns. They 
hold in their hand letters patent of nobility, 
namely, a hotel bill for eight or ten weeks' 
board at Bedford Springs. The second order 
are those who stay two or three weeks. Let 
them be honored ! They were at six " hops," 
rode out twice to the races, and formed the 
acquaintance of the nephew of one of the staff 
officers of General Burnside. All hail ! Put 
down a strip of carpet from carriage to door- 
step as they come back. Make way for them 
on the church aisle. Here they come after 
three weeks at Ballston Spa. The lowest order 
are those who can only say that they were gone 



268 SUBL IME IV R E TCHE D NE S S 

'* a few days." We would not by any means 
class them with those who stay at home, or 
merely go into the country, for they. are on the 
way up, and in a few years may compass a 
whole month away. Many who once had no 
better prospects than they, have lived to spend 
six weeks in an attic at five dollars a day. 
Many people, no doubt, gain great physical 
and mental advantages from their stay at 
watering-places. Toiling men and women 
find here a respite, make valuable acquaint- 
ance, and come home with stronger and stead- 
ier pulse. But there are a multitude that 
crowd these places, unhappy while they stay, 
and sick when they come home. What with 
small rooms, and tight clothes, and late hours, 
and slights, and heart-burnings, and nothing to 
do, it makes up what we call the sublime 
wi^etchedness of watering-places. 

The Simingtons lived in a perfect palace on 
Rittenhouse Square. There was not a stone, 
or nail, or panel, or banister in all the house 
that seemed to be in anywise related to the 
nails, stones, panels, or banisters of the houses 
of common people. There was an air of pride 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 269 

and pomp in the mortar of the foundation — a 
very aristocracy of mud. The halls were wide, 
and ran straight through, ample enough to 
allow a military company to march and wheel. 
The stairs were mahogany, uncarpeted, but 
guarded by elaborately twisted rails, at every 
turn revealing a bust of marble looking at you 
from the niche in the w^all. The exact size of 
the rooms had been sent to Axminster, with an 
order that the loom must do its best. The 
walls blossomed and bloomed with master- 
pieces. Bronze, with wing of chandelier, shook 
down the light. The golden links that drooped 
about the burners, in a gust of evening air zig- 
zagged — the chain-lightning of uppertendom. 
There was a bewitching perfume w^hich filled 
the house, and made you think that the wreaths 
in the plush and on the silvered paper of the 
wall were living flowers that held in their urns 
the ashes of all past generations of posies. 
The curtains stooped about the window grace- 
ful as the veil of a bride. The sleeping apart- 
ments were adorned with canopy, and em- 
broidered pillow, and lounges, and books, and 
toilet -table of tinged marble, on which lay 
23* 



2/0 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

brushes and other apparatus with which heir- 
esses smoothed, or frizzled, or curled, or 
twisted, or knotted, or waved, or crimped, or 
coiled, or bunched, or flumixed their hair. 

In a word, it was a great house, and ordinary 
people seldom saw the inside of it, save when 
passing, as the door opened to let out a party 
to the flashing carriage that wheeled restlessly 
about the door. Indeed, on our small street 
we all tried to do as the Simingtons did. We 
saw how they wore their cravats, and that was 
the way we tied ours. They told us at the 
cane - store that Simington had just bought a 
peculiar handle, and we took one just like it. 
Our wives and daughters, instead of treading 
straieht on as once when we took them to 

o 

church, surprised us by a peculiar gait made 
up of teeter, swing, and waddle, which made 
us look down, and, in fear of their sudden 
paralysis, ask, "What is the matter?" but we 
instantly saw that they were only taking on 
the way of the Simingtons, and so we excused 
them. 

It was the first day of June, and the back 
room of the second story of that house looked 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 2/1 

as if It had been tossed of a whirlwind. Two 
dress - makers of the first order were busy in 
preparing an outfit for the young ladies and 
their mother, who were soon to start for the 
watering - place. The floor, and table, and 
chairs, and divans were covered with patterns, 
and scissors, and fragments of silk, and flakes 
of cotton, and smoothing irons, and spools, and 
buttons, and tassels, and skeins of silk, and 
rolls of goods from which the wrapping had 
just been torn, riding-habits green and black 
and flamboyant, pearl pendants and pipings of 
satin glittering with steel, bugles, and beads, 
and rings, and ribbons, sky-blue, grass -green 
or fire - tipped, and chenille and coral for the 
hair, and fringes, and gimps, and pufls, and 
flutings, and braids, and bands, and bracelets, 
and necklets, and collars, and cuffs, and robes 
of mohair, and dresses adorned with Cluny 
lace and Chambery gauze, and grenadines, and 
organdines, and tarlatanes, and moreens, a 
package of Ivins's Patent Hair Crimper, and 
bandelets of straw bells, and a great variety 
of hats — shell hats, soup - plate hats, sailor 
hats, hats so small that they looked as if the 



2/2 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

bird lodged in die trimming were carrying 
diem off, and hats that would not be taken for 
hats at all, a bottle of Upham's Freckle and 
Tan Banisher, and a vial of Swarthout's Pimple 
Extinguisher, and a box of Cruickshank's 
Wart Exterminator, and a hundred other things 
the use of which you could not Imagine, unless 
they were weapons with which to transfix hard- 
hearted bachelors, or lassos with which to haul 
In unmanageable coquettes. All these things 
were to be matched, made up, fixed, sewed 
together, cut apart, organized, and packed in 
trunks. 

Matilda, the elder daughter, and Blanche, 
were flushed with the excitement of the great 
undertakinor. Blanche had heard that Florence, 
the only daughter of the next - door neighbor, 
was going to make her first appearance that 
year at the Springs, and the idea of being sur- 
passed by that young snip, as Blanche called 
her, was a thing not to be borne. Every few 
moments the door -bell was rung by errand- 
boys from the stores on Chestnut Street, and 
while the servant was attending the door, 
Blanche would drop the patterns, and run up 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 2/3 

and down the room In a state of nervousness 
that would have been unjustifiable were it not 
for the important preparations that were being 
made. 

Matilda was plainer, and more self- reliant. 
The fact was that her childhood had been 
schooled in some hardships. The Simingtons 
had not always lived on Rittenhouse Square. 
The father had belonged to that class of per- 
sons who have to work for a living, and Matilda 
had at one time been obliged to run of errands, 
scour the front steps, and wait on the door, 
while her mother did her own work. Now it 
is well known that while there may be romance 
about a maiden with sleeves rolled back from 
dimpled arms, wringing clothes in a mountain 
stream by the rude cabin of her father, there 
never has been and never will be any romance 
about a wash-tub In a city kitchen, the air hot 
and steamed, the apron soaked, the sweat run- 
ning to the tip of nose and chin, and the whole 
scene splashed with a magnitude of soapsuds, 
soda ash, and bags of bluing. Burns picked 
up poetry out of a mouse's nest, and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson can squeeze juice from a 



,^BLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

oasket of chips, but no one has ever plucked 
up a canto from the depths of a wash-tub, or 
been able to measure poetic feet with a bar of 
soap. Who would think of rinsing clothes in 
the Aganippe ? To this day Mrs. Simington's 
knuckles are big, and there is an unseemly- 
healthiness about her cheek which three years 
of dissipation in very high life have been unable 
to conquer. 

Amid such uncomely circumstances, Matilda 
had nearly come to a practical, robust woman- 
hood, when her father, Jephthah Simington, 
was invited into an oil speculation. (Jephthah 
was the Christian name given him by an an- 
cestor who had a passion for Scripture names, 
although now he writes it simply J. Simington.) 
By an evening lamp six gentlemen met, made 
out a map of Venango County, located the oil- 
wells, ran creeks through wherever they ought 
to be, ag-reed on the number of shares, and 
appointed a committee to visit Elder String- 
ham of the Presbyterian church, and induce 
him to accept the presidency of the company, 
overcoming his scruples at entering an enter- 
prise of which he knew nothing, by offering 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 2/5 

him a large number of shares ; and by the 
same process securing as directors Deacon 
Long of the Baptist church, trustee Wilkinson 
of the Methodist, and vestryman Powell of the 
Episcopal. The shares flew. At the door of 
the company's office, for several days, the peo- 
ple stood in rows, taking their chance, and one 
old gentleman had a rib broken by a woman 
of Celtic origin with iron elbows, who crashed 
into his side as the Merrimac into the Cum- 
berland, shouting: "You murtherin' wretch, 
git back. What do you mane by runnin' for- 
iiinst a poor woman "with five orphan chil- 
dren ? " 

In this, as in several other projects of the 
kind, Simington went in on the "ground floor," 
and came out through " the cellar." All the 
people on our street were outraged and dis- 
gusted, for nearly all belonged to some of the 
three thousand companies organized for the 
development of oil, and they all supposed that 
they had gone in on the' "ground floor," but 
found that they had only entered the garret. 
It always shocks people's moral sensibilities 
when they find others successfully doing that 



2^6 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

which they failed in. But there were three or 
four Httle enterprises of this kind that both- 
ered Simington at night when he said his 
prayers. Indeed, one night, as he came to the 
sentence, " If I should die before I wake," he 
bounded up from his knees, and sat down at 
the table, and drew a check for a hundred 
dollars for the Missionary Society, that Bibles 
might be sent to Ethiopia to make all the col- 
ored people honest ; also a check for a hundred 
dollars for the printing of tracts on the sin of 
dancing ; and another for the same amount to 
the fund for the relief of 'the destitute, some of 
them having been the victims of " those who 
devour widows' houses." Whereupon he felt 
better, went immediately to sleep, and dreamed 
of a heaven in which the rivers rolled oil, and 
the rocks gushed oil, and the trees dripped oil, 
and the skies rained oil, and, on a throne made 
out of " Slippery Rock, " sat the prince of stock- 
auctioneers, crying: "And a half! and a 'alf! 
going ! gone ! " 

No wonder the Simingtons so soon moved 

o 

into a palace. But they had a world of trou- 
ble with their old acquaintances. It seemed 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 277 

impossible to shake off the nuisance. Blanche 
could hardly pass down the steps with Antonio 
Grimshaw, on the way to the opera, without 
having some woman in ordinary apparel ask : 
" How do you do, Blanche ? " Whereupon 
she would frown, and stare, and almost look 
the offender down through the sidewalk ; and 
when Antonio said, ''Who was that?" Blanche 
would answer, " I don't know the horrid crea- 
ture ! It is probably our servant-girl's dress- 
maker ! " It seemed to the Simingtons as if 
their life would be extinguished with the impu- 
dence of people. Oh ! the disgrace of having 
a hack drive to the door, and a distant relative 
from the country dismount, holding a faded 
carpet-bag, the handles tied together by a 
rope ; to go down to the parlor and have a 
gawk of a niece come up with a hat all over 
her head, and give you a great smack, as 
though she had a right to kiss the Siming- 
tons ! 

But people have mostly learned to know 
their place by this time, and, unmolested by 
such untimely calls and disgusting remem- 
brances, the dresses are being fitted. Ma- 
24 



278 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

tilda's shape had, by early industries, been 
made too robust for present circumstances, 
and the dress - maker had an awful time with 
her. All the ingenuity of the house had been 
expended in trying to diminish her waist. The 
dress-maker pinched, and pulled, and twisted, 
and laced, and punched, and shook the stub- 
born Matilda, who, in the painful process of 
being fitted, looked red, and pale, and blue, 
once in a while giving an outcry of distress, 
which finally brought her mother to the rescue. 
" Matilda ! " cried Mrs. Simington, " how can 
you go on so ? You shall be left at home if 
you don't look out ! .You are a great awkward 
thing. Why, when I was your age I could 
completely span my waist with my two hands ! " 
" Oh, mother ! mother ! " answered Matilda, " it 
is not my fault. The trouble is, there is not 
strencrth enough in the corsets !'' 

The first day of July had come, and eleven 
trunks were lifted into the express-wagon: one 
for the father, three for the mother, one for 
Frank, the only son, a young man of twenty- 
one, and six for Blanche and Matilda. Added 
to this was a bundle belonging to Rose, the 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 279 

black waitino;-maId. It was a hot mornlnor, the 
thermometer eighty-five In the shade. The cars 
were fi-ill of people, and the SImlngtons were 
obliged to sit on the sunny side. None were 
willing to give up their seats, although Mrs. 
SImlngton for some seconds looked daggers at 
a gentleman who, she thought, might be more 
polite, and, not making any Impression upon 
him, ran the point of her parasol accidentally 
into his eye, and with a sudden swing of her 
skirts upset his valise. "What horrid crea- 
tures!" said Blanche. "How pleasant It would 
be to find som.e real gentleman ! " It was the 
morning for an excursion. There were six ex- 
tra cars, and all of themi crowded. The rush- 
ing back and forward of such a herd of work- 
ing-people pained the sensibilities of the whole 
SImlngton family, Matilda excepted. She 
looked thoroughly placid, and said, " Other 
people have as good a right to travel as we ; 
and this hot weather. Instead of making you 
pout, my dear sister, ought to fill us with 
thanksgiving to God, for it will ripen the har- 
vest, and make bread cheap for the poor." 
" Hush up, Matilda!" said Mrs. SImlngton; 



28o SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

"you will never get over your early mixing 
with those Methodists. We are going out to 
have a good time, and I don't want to hear 
any more of your religious comments. Blanche 
was right. The weather is awful. Frank ! 
what has become of your shirt-collar ? Wilted 
out of sight, I declare ! " The dust flew with 
every revolution of the wheels. Frank had 
all the family by turns looking into his eye for 
a cinder, and was so outraged that he went 
out on the platform to have what he called " a 
good swear," felt somewhat relieved, and came 
back, and, pulling down the lower lid of his 
eye, had his mother blow into it. But no cin- 
der was to be found. Blanche said she did 
not believe there was anything the matter 
with It: whereupon Frank called her a name 
not at all eulogistic, and Blanche responded In 
terms more emphatic than complimentary. 

J. Simington sat quiet, for he felt thoroughly 
exhausted. His anxieties about the trunks, 
his misunderstanding with the porters, his con- 
fusion about the checks, and the purchase of 
five through tickets, had besweated him amaz- 
ingly. When the agent cried out, "Show 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 281 

your tickets ! " the old gentleman missed one 
of them, felt In his coat-pocket, In his vest. In 
his duster, looked In his hat, looked under the 
seat, took out his pocket-book, had all the 
people rise and move their carpet-bags, and 
the ladles shake out their dresses, and repeated 
the whole process several times, till the agent 
lost his patience and made the perplexed trav- 
eller pay again. What with the heat, and the 
dust, and the cinders, and the bad breath of 
the common people, the annoyance would have 
been unbearable to the SImlngtons, had It not 
been for the self-control and Imperturbable 
demeanor of Matilda, and the assurance which 
every now and then came to their minds that 
they were off on the especial business of hav- 
ing a good time. 

After much fatigue our party reach the 
watering-place, and go from the cars to a first- 
class hotel. While the family are waiting in 
the reception-room, J. Simlngton, Esquire, Is 
at the clerk's desk reo^isterlnor the names. He 
writes them In full hand, supposing that a de- 
cided sensation will be produced among the 

guests and hotel officials : 
24^ 



282 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

J. Simington, 
Mrs. J. Simington, 
Frank Simington, 
Matilda Simington, 
Blanche Simington, 
And waiting -maid. 

Surely such signatures upon the register 
will secure princely accommodations. " Give 
me three capacious rooms adjoining each other, 
on the first floor, sufficiently distant from all 
house -bells, in a place where there will be no 
children passing the door, and free from all the 
odors of the dining-room, the windows com- 
manding a fine landscape ! " The clerk re- 
sponded, " We will do the best we can for you, 
and will put down your name on a private list 
for better apartments when there is a vacancy. 
It is our pride to make the guests comfortable. 
John ! show these people up to 397, 398, 399." 

The procession start for the centre of the 
building, and go up this flight of stairs, up 
another, higher, higher, through this hall, out 
on that porch, higher, higher, around this cor- 
ner, through that dark entry, higher, higher, 
the wrath of the Simingtons rising with every 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 283 

Step of elevation, until, as the attendant opens 
the three doors and throws the shawls, um- 
brellas, and satchels on the bed, the guests are 
almost speechless with rage. Old Simington 
says : " This is outrageous ! They do not 
know who I am ! " His wife says nothing, for 
she is out of breath from the exertion of 
climbing. Blanche bursts into tears. Frank 
exclaimed, with several unsavory prefixes, 
" What a place to roost ! " Matilda sat down 
and said, "Well, this is funny! but I guess we 
can make out. We will be rambling in the 
fields all da.y, and at night we can up here 
sleep so much nearer heaven." " Hush ! you 
Methodist ! " cried Mrs. Simington with her 
first gasp of utterance; "you will kill me yet 
with your religion. The top of a mean, dirty 
hotel, with the thermometer at three hundred, 
and no place to turn, or sit, or lay, is no place for 
moralizing." At this she gave a tremendous 
pull to the bell, and shouted at the servant 
" What kind of a place do you call this ? Dirty 
pillow-cases ; damp sheets ; no soap ; thimble- 
ful of water; one towel, and no ice -water. 
Who would have thought I could ever come to 



284 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

this ! J. Simlngton ! why did you bring me 
here ? " " My dear ! " interrupted the husband, 
as he began to make an explanation — "Be 
still ! " cried Mrs. Simlngton ; " you did it a-pur- 
pose ! How could you treat in this way the 
companion of your bosom ?" 

The fact was that the best roomxS had all 
been taken. They always have been. We 
have known a great many people who went to 
watering-places, and we never knew of but 
one man who had rooms that entirely suited 
him. We have his photograph. The clerk at 
the hotel had never heard of the Simingtons. 
There are a great many rich people in the 
world, and a man must have a pile of dollars 
like an Astor or the Barings to be greatly 
distinguished. You see that m.oney is a very 
uncertain thing, for many who have but little 
act as though they had m.uch, and the really 
affluent often make but little pretension, and 
people are worth so much more after they fail 
than before they fail. The hotel clerks had no 
idea of what kind of a house the Simingtons 
lived in, nor how many servants they kept, nor 
what mottled bays with silver bits moved in 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 23$ 

their flashing " turn-out." The hotel proprie- 
tors knew not but that, notwithstanding their ap- 
pearance, these guests might really be as poor 
as the storied turkey that belonged to the "man 
of Uz." It might be possible that the Siming- 
tons belonged to that class of people who, liv- 
ing at home in a small house, blacking their 
own boots, and doing the millinery of their 
own hats, and making their own dresses from 
patterns which they copy from a shop-window, 
come into hotels to order people about, and 
complain of their apartments, of the waiters, 
of the table-cloth — trying by their "air" to 
give everybody the idea that they are accus- 
tomed to having things better. Depend upon 
it those who at the public table insult the 
waiters, and send back the spring chicken 
three times before they get one of a proper 
shade of brown, and slash things around con- 
spicuously, at home their greatest luxury is 
hash, which they eat off of a table-cloth in 
need of soap, because they do their own 
washing ; and that they seldom see a spring 
chicken except in a cheap wood-cut, or at their 
frugal breakfast in a grocery egg which some 



286. SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

worthy hen had for three weeks tried to hatch 
out, but In grief had surrendered to the huck- 
ster, who wanted just one more to make a 
dozen. Those who in pubhc places never 
say " Thank you ! " to the waiters, at home 
you may be sure have no waiters to thank. 
Considering what they have to suffer, we had 
rather be anything on earth than a hotel- 
waiter, excepting always the position of a 
mule on a tow-path, drawing a second-class 
canal-boat. 

But the Simingtons really had it better at 
home. We wonder not that they noticed a 
contrast. From a house with fourteen spa- 
cious apartments, they had come to three 
about as large as the rooms of a travelling 
photographist, who on four wheels carries 
from village to village art -gallery, bed -room, 
parlor, kitchen, and a place to dry clothes. 
There was no canopy to the bed, no embroid- 
ery to the pillows, no gilt on the lips of the 
pitcher. The window-shades would not work. 
The slats of the blinds were disordered, the 
carpet was faded, the drawers would not open, 
the atmosphere was musty, the flies were mul- 



OP WATERING-PLACES. 287 

titudlnous, and nodiing cooled die temper of 
die father, or regulated the respiration of the 
mother, or moderated the sarcastic ebullitions 
of Frank, or relieved Blanche's hysterics, but 
the potent consideration that they were, indi- 
vidually and collectively, having a good time. 

But never mind. Their names were down 
on the private list of those who had applied for 
better rooms when there were any vacated. 
We have all had our names down on that list. 
We have to-day the satisfaction of knowing 
that our names are down on several such lists 
at Long Branch, Cape May, Saratoga, Bellows 
Falls, Niagara, and the White Mountains. It 
is a roll of honor ever increasinor. We have 
for the last five years been liable any moment 
to hear that there was at last for us a capacious 
room on the first floor, sufficiently distant from 
all the house-bells, in a place where there would 
be no children passing the door, and free from 
all the odors of the dining-room, the windows 
commanding a fine landscape. We hereby 
advise all who go to these places to see to it 
immediately on arrival that their names are re- 
corded on this private register. 



288 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

The fatigues of the day disposed the Shn- 
ingtons to sound sleep at night. But the heat 
was intolerable. Mrs. Simington got up, and 
sat by the window, and said she should die ; 
and Simington, disturbed by her frequent 
moonlight excursions about the room, declared 
he hoped she would. The previous occupants 
of the room had come thither on a sleeping- 
car, the beds of which had been infested by 
travellers who always take a free passage, and 
who often become so attached to people on a 
short acquaintance that they cannot consent 
to part. These little, innocent, previous occu- 
pants of the bed at the watering-place, were 
evidently provoked that their lodgings had been 
intruded upon by the Simlngtons, and the latter, 
in maintaining a war against these creatures, 
were ofttlmes put to the scratch. Mrs. Sim- 
ington at midnight compelled her husband to 
sit up on a chair, while she shook the sheets, 
and with weapons deadly as Mrs. Surratt's 
"shooting- irons " pursued the insectlferous 
Amalekites, and frorn a bottle found on the 
shelf anointed them with an excellent oil that 
broke their heads, and in a fit of terrible 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 289 

humor, that was Hable to seize her on very 
untoward occasions, asked her husband why 
that bed was like a Hght carnage drawn by 
one horse ; and Simincrton for the first time in 
his Hfe guessed right, and answered, " Because 
it's buggy." At which Mrs. Simington gave a 
Satanic laugh, (she seldom laughed except at 
her own jokes,) and said she did not care so 
much for the discomfort produced by these 
litde things, but what she most thought of was 
her complexion. 

At last the morning dawned, and the whole 
family started to take a drink at the Springs 
before breakfast. The fountains were sur- 
rounded by a great crowd of people, and the 
test was who should drink the most. Now, J. 
Simington was physically almost as much in 
latitude as longitude, and therefore had unusual 
capacity. He unbuttoned his vest and threw 
back the lapels of his coat, and seemed to take 
down a whole glass at one swallow. Blanche 
made a wry face, and said such stuff as that 
would kill her, but Antonio Grimshaw had told 
her of the twenty -four glasses he took before 
breakfast, and so she resolved to do her best. 
25 T 



290 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

Out of glasses from which scores of scrofulous, 
bad - breathed, dropsical people had been re- 
freshing themselves, the Simingtons, who had 
not for the last two years been willing to drink 
out of anybody else's tumbler, took down the 
disagreeable beverage. Matilda drank two or 
three glasses, and said she thought there was 
reason in all things, and that she had enough. 
But the rest of the family took ten apiece 
before they began to discuss the question of 
stopping. Then they made several turns about 
the grass - plot, and came back able to take 
more. They sipped the liquid health. They 
poured it down. They plunged their face into 
the glass till their nose dripped with it. They 
drank for a while standing on one foot, then 
they resumed standing on the other. They 
quaffed the nectar of the hills till the dipping- 
boys were confounded. Others handed the 
glasses back, the contents only half taken, these 
drained the last drop at the bottom. They 
rolled the water under their tongue as though 
it were perfect sweetness. They took up the 
brimming cups carefully, so as not to spill the 
precious liquid. After most of the health- 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 29I 

seekers had left the fountain, Mrs. Simlngton 
cried out, " More ! more ! Here, boy ! attend 
to your business!" And when at last they 
wended their way toward the hotel, they feared 
they had not fully improved their privileges. 

For some reason they all day felt miserable, 
and had no appetite, felt faint, and chilly, and 
nauseated, so that before noon Blanche went 
to her bed and had a doctor. But that nieht 
was to come off the " hop " of the season, and 
sick or well she meant to eo to it. Durine 
the forenoon Matilda nursed her sister, and 
answered her fears by prophecy that she would 
soon feel better. As the hour for the " hop " 
drew near, the sick one recovered. Takinor 
only a short while for her own toilet, Matilda 
gave her chief time to the adornment of 
Blanche and her mother. All the trunks were 
opened, and out came all the splendor of the 
SImlngtons, the numberless items of which I 
have already named. Matilda selected for the 
evenine the tamer colors ; but Mrs. Slmineton 
exclaimed, " Matilda ! you shall not make a 
Methodist of your sister." 

The ornamentation went on until ten o'clock 



292 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

The elder Simington had got himself Into 
a profuse perspiration in trying to tie Mrs. 
Simington's corsets, and in the effort to bring 
together the fastenings of Blanche's dress the 
energies of the whole family were taxed. But, 
the work done, they start for the ball - room. 
Such a cavalcade seldom descended at the 
watering - place. Blanche was in perpetual 
dread lest some one should tread on her dress, 
and her mother worried lest her own head- 
gear should not be appreciated. The music 
of the orchestra rose to their ears, and with a 
feeling of pride and jubilance that surpassed 
everything the Simingtons had felt, they march 
into the brilliant circle. The mother was well 
pleased to see Matilda take a chair in an in- 
conspicuous place, instead of joining the 
dance, for, notwithstanding all that maternal 
kindness could effect, Matilda would walk 
naturally, and took no pains to hide her 
unfashionable waist, and blushed so red on 
the least provocation that her cheek was as 
ruddy as a mountain lass who had never done 
anything to improve her complexion. But 
Frank, with Blanche on his arm, promenaded 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 293 

the room that all mloht admire his sister's 
beauty. 

The rustle of silks, the tap of a hundred 
feet, the quick pulsations of flutes and horns, 
the magnificent burst of harmonies, the ringing 
voice of the manager, the blaze of diamonds 
on head and hand and neck, the bow, the whirl, 
the laughter, the transport, were beyond antici- 
pation. At the close of the first " set," Mrs. 
Simington, in manner naive as any girl, and 
with silk fan patting her lip, stood before a 
bashful young man, whom she had thoroughly 
cornered with her outspread immensity of 
skirts, engaged in conversation, chiefly con- 
ducted by herself, in which were most f)romi- 
nent the words, " Really," " Indeed," " Delight- 
ful," "So nice," ''Yes!" "My stars," and 
similar expressions, suggestive of affluence of 
thought and profundity of investigation. But 
it must be acknowledged that this lady pro- 
duced that night no pleasing impression. She 
was set down as one of that class of women 
who may always be seen in such places, and 
who, having outlived their youthfulness, have 
an idea that by extra lace, skirt, slipper, and 



294 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

mincing they can make themselves perfectly 
killing. One of the worst - looking birds that 
we know of is a peacock after it has lost its 
feathers. 

The handsomest man on the floor was Dallas 
Clifford. His walk, his glance, his dress, his 
talk were a perpetual sensation. For several 
summers he made the tour of the watering- 
places, now stopping at the Falls, then at the 
Springs, and concluding at the sea-shore. He 
had long done as he pleased, his father from a 
princely purse furnishing him all he desired. 
His hands had never been hardened by toil, 
nor his brow paled with thought. He had 
been expelled the first year of his college 
course for indolence and occasional dissipation. 
He had no regard for God or man, but great 
admiration for the ladies. That night as he 
moved in the dance there were scores who 
exclaimed, " Such eyes ! " " Such lips ! " " Such 
gait!" "Who ever saw the equal?" 

During the day, Frank Simington, while 
taking a drink at the bar, had been introduced 
to this pet of the watering-places. They were 
immediately congenial, found they liked the 



OF WATERING-PLACES, 295 

same kind of wines, the same kind of fast 
horses, and the same style of feminine beauty. 
So they drank each other's health, and before 
a week had passed, drank it in sulphur water 
at the Springs, drank it in Hock, drank it in 
Cognac, drank it in Burgundy, drank it in 
Madeira, drank it in Swan gin, drank it in 
Heidsieck, drank it in Champagne, drank it in 
Cliquot. 

Frank was resolved that at the " hop '' his 
sister Blanche should have the advantage of 
an acquaintance with Dallas Clifford. In the 
making up of the first " set " the introduction 
took place, and Clifford offered his arm, and 
accompanied Blanche in all the dances of the 
evening. Together they bounded in the 
"gallop," and bowed in " The Lancers," and 
stepped in "The Redowa," and whirled in the 
" waltz." If there really were darts in jealous 
eyes, Blanche would have been transfixed with 
a hundred. It seemed almost a unanimous 
opinion that she was not fit to dance with such 
a prodigy. There were many who would have 
been glad to hear her dress rip, or see her false 
hair tumble. An envious mamma, who had 



296 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

for three hours been arranging her own 
daughter with especial reference to the cap- 
ture of Chfford, remarked in quite loud voice, 
hoping that Blanche would hear it, " I knew 
her father when he sold fish in the market ! " 
''Yes," says another, "the Simingtons always 
were vulgar ! " But Blanche's mother looked 
on with an admiration she did not try to con- 
ceal. She thought : " How beautiful they look 
together ! Both young ; both handsome ; both 
rich. It would be just the thing." She looked 
at Simington, and Simington looked at her with 
a joy equal to that which he felt on the day 
when from the top of "Slippery Rock" he 
tumbled into a fortune. 

While the Simingtons returned to their 
rooms in a state of delectation, there were 
many who left the ball - room with hearts far 
from happy. Their splendor of dress had not 
been appreciated. They had not danced with 
those whose company they most desired. 
Others not half so attractive as themselves 
had carried off the spoils, and the "hop" had 
kindled more heart - burnings, jealousies, scan- 
dals, revenges, satires, and backbitings than 



OF WATERING-PLACES, ^ 297 

will ever be told of. Some wished diey were 
home. Others wished they had been dressed 
differently. Still others wished they had gone to 
some other watering-place, where they would 
have been appreciated. They denounced the 
music, and the manager, and the ball - room. 
The men were all '' gawks," and the ladles all 
"flirts," and the whole evening a vexation. 
They never before saw such miserable head- 
dresses, or such ridiculous slippers, or so many 
paste diamonds. Some of the more tenderly 
nervous, as soon as they reached their rooms, 
sat down and cried. They had been neglected. 
They took such coldness on the part of gen- 
tlemen as a positive insult. They threw their 
satin slippers into the corner with a vengeance, 
and, in perfect recklessness as to consequences, 
tossed a two - pound ball of hair against the 
looking-glass, and vowed they would never go 
again. 

Not so with Blanche, for. she dreamed all 
night of castles, and parks of deer, and gal- 
leries of art, and music, and gobelin tapestry, 
and of gondolas putting out from golden sands, 
on sapphire waters, angel-beckoned. But the 



298 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

next morning the whole Simington family 
gathered themselves together to attend to 
Matilda. The evening before, instead of whirl- 
ing In the dance, she had sat and looked on, 
much of the time talking to a long, lean, 
cadaverous gentleman, who had somehow ob- 
tained acquaintance with her. The gentleman, 
having just graduated from the law school, had 
come to recruit from exhaustion of protracted 
study, and was staying at "The Brodwell 
House," a cheap but respectable hotel, on one 
of the less prominent streets. He was plainly 
dressed, had neither diamond breast - pin, nor 
kid gloves, nor whisk cane, nor easy manners. 
He came in that evening to see what he could 
learn of the gay world, and sat studying char- 
acter while looking at the "hop." The Sim- 
ingtons felt outraged at Matilda's behavior. 
How could she sit there and talk with a man 
who was stopping at the Brodwell House ! He 
would never be. anything. He had actually 
appeared in bare hands, and they were big. 
How could she throw herself away, and forget 
her father's name, and her mother's entreaty, 
and her sister's prospects ! " But," said Ma- 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 299 

tilda, *' he was intelligent, and the tones of his 
voice indicated a kind disposition, and the ideas 
he expressed were elevated, and positively 
Christian." " Dear me ! " said her mother ; 
" Matilda ! I expect you will pass your whole 
life in saying your prayers and talking religion. 
I despair of ever making you anything worthy 
of the Simingtons ! " " More than that," said 
Matilda, " his conversation was very improving, 
and we have engaged to walk to-day to Cedar 
Grove, and examine the peculiar flora which 
he says abound in that region. We are both 
very fond of botany." 

While Matilda and the law student were out 
on the floral excursion, and talking- of all the 
subjects kindred to flowers, Dallas Clifford and 
Blanche were arm - in - arm promenading the 
piazza, or at the piano ; while Miss Simington 
was making up for her lack of musical skill by 
great exuberance of racket, Clifford was turn- 
ing for her the leaves, and, between his favorite 
selections, uttering various sentimentalities, and 
interlarding his conversation with all the French 
phrases he knew — such as toit-t eiisemble, valet 
de chambi^e, hors du combat, a la belle etoile. 



300 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

chateau en Espagne, till several persons stand- 
ing near felt so sick they had to leave the room 
and take a little soda to settle their stomachs. 
Meanwhile, from day to day, and from week 
to week, Mr. and Mrs. Simington wandered 
about, not knowing what to do with themselves. 
They had no taste for reading, although on 
Rittenhouse Square they had a costly library ; 
indeed they owned ten thousand dollars' worth 
of books. Through a literary friend em- 
powered to make selection, J. Simington had 
secured all the standard works of history, poe- 
try, romance, art, and ethics. Although ac- 
quainted with none of the dead languages, he 
owned ^schylus, Lucian, Sophocles, Strabo, 
Pindar, and Plautus. He rejoiced in possessing 
so many square feet of brains, and realized that 
Aristophanes ought to feel honored to stand 
on the shelf of the Simingtons. Several times 
he had looked at the pictures in Don Quixote, 
and took the engraving of the traveller in Pil- 
grim's Progress to be the sketch of some un- 
fortunate traveller in the oil regions, and sup- 
posed that Macaulay's History was merely a 
continuance of the wonderful escapes of 



OF WATERING-FLACKS. 3OI 

Robinson Crusoe, and that "Young's Night 
Thoughts " was the story of some dream which 
that worthy had experienced after a late supper 
of boiled crabs. Nevertheless, there were 
whole shelves of books in richest foreign bind- 
ings, printed on vellum, tipped with gold, set 
off with exquisite vignettes. Among these a 
copy of the Scriptures, upon which all the 
wealth of typology, etching, and book-bindery 
had displayed itself — a Bible so grandly gotten 
up, that if the inspired fishermen had come in, 
and, with their hands yet harS from the fishing- 
tackle, had attempted to touch it, they would 
have been kicked out. 

Mr. and Mrs. Simington had not brought 
with them any of these standard ^^orks, but 
for purposes of light reading had bought from 
the news - boy on the cars five volumes, 
entitled, " The Revenge," " The Bloody Tinge," 
•' Castles on Fire," " The Frightful Leap," and 
" The Murderess on Trial." But they had no 
taste even for such fascinating literature. Mrs. 
Simington, with ''The Frightful Leap" under 
her arm, walked from bedroom to parlor, and 

from parlor to hall, and from hall to piazza, 
26 



302 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

wonderi-ng when dinner would be ready. She 
tried to sleep in the daytime, but the bed was 
hard, and she felt restless. She met on the 
stairs a lady who like herself was afflicted with 
restlessness, and said that the day was hot, or 
dusty, or asked the other lady how many 
glasses of water she could take before break- 
fast, and then passed on. She sat down and 
groaned without any apparent cause. She 
walked in front of the long mirror to see how 
her shawl looked, and then walked back again, 
then stepped up face to face with the looking- 
glass, gave a twist to one of her curls, drew 
her face into a pucker, surveyed the room to 
see if any one was observing, and then sat 
down ag^n. She jogged her foot uneasily, 
and thumped her fingers on the table, and 
looked for the twentieth time at the pictures 
in "The Frightful Leap," and, without any 
especial feeling of hunger, longed for the doors 
of the dining-hall to open, that she might have 
something to do. She found no relief from 
this feeling in looking at others, for nine-tenths 
of all the ladies were wanderinor about in the 
same perplexity. They differed in many other 



OF WAT£ RING- PLACES. 303 

things. Some had fans, and some were with- 
out fans. Some wore white, and some black. 
Some had curls, and some no curls. Some 
roomed in the third story, and some in the 
fourth. Some took soup, and some did not. 
But whatever might be their differences, they 
nearly all agreed in a feeling of unrest, longed 
for something to do, studied where they had 
better go next, agonized for something to see, 
and wondered when dinner would be ready. 

Mr. Simington exhibited in a different way 
the same feeling. At home he was a man of 
business. Thouo-h owning^ a lar^re estate, he 
had the peculiarity of wanting more. The 
change from the active commercial circles in 
which he was accustomed to mingle, to his 
present entire cessation from business, was 
unbearable. He walked about with the solem- 
nity, but without the resignation of a martyr. 
He bothered the clerk of the hotel by inces- 
sant asking, "Is the mail in?" He wondered 
whether gold was up or down. Wondered 
whether his firm had heard from that man out 
West. Wondered if they were working off 
that old stock of goods. He walked over to 



304 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

the billiard saloon ; went down to the bowling- 
alley ; felt thankful as he met a little Indian 
boy with arrows wanting a penny put up to be 
shot at; walked round the block, came back 
and asked, " Is the mail in ?" 

But there was another form of amusement 
in which J. Simington frequently found relief, 
and that was in the examination of the hotel 
register. It was such a pleasant thing to go 
up and read the arrivals for the last month, and 
study the chirography of distinguished individ- 
uals. The only hindrance to this was the fact 
that a dozen other gentlemen with nothing else 
to do were wanting to examine the record at 
the same time, those standing in front some- 
what vexed at having so many people looking 
over their shoulder. 

Although possessing large means, he whiled 
away much of the time by denouncing the 
extortion of hotel -keepers, and the extortion 
of boot -blacks, and the extortion of porters, 
and the extortion of livery-men. As to the 
waiters, he said you were sure to get mac- 
caroni soup when you ordered mock -turtle, 
or blue "fish when you ordered sheep's-head. 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 305 

What was worse for a nervous man, there 
were so many sick people who had gone there 
for their health. But this imposition, which 
J. Simington bore in silence, his wife openly 
condemned. " How can I stand it ? " she cried, 
" this everlasting wheezing of asthmatics, and 
hobbling of cripples, and dropsical swellings, 
and jaundiced complexions, and display of 
sores ! " She did not know why such people 
were allowed to come there. It was perfectly 
outrageous. The place for sick people was at 
home. Once she lay all night with two pillows 
and a shawl on her ear, so as not to hear the 
coughing in an adjoining apartment. 

At last the day for the long-expected horse- 
race arrived, and although J. Simington and 
his wife did not much approve of horse-racing, 
they hired a carriage at ten dollars an hour 
(vehicles were that day so much in demand) 
and went out to the course. The dust flew till 
Mrs. Simington's eyes and mouth and nose 
were full, and two fast gentlemen, with their 
horses at full run, dashed into the carriage of 
our friends, and almost upset them. But Mr. 

Simington soothed his wife's consternation, 
26* u 



306 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

and calmed her feelings, by bidding her re- 
member that they were having a good time. 
The platforms were crowded, sporting hats 
were numerous, all the adjplning stables 
crowded with fine horses, which were being 
rubbed down and blanketed. And to put 
themselves under the treatment of the elevat- 
ing influences of the race -course, there came 
in gamblers, pickpockets, thieves, horse -jock- 
eys, bloats, and libertines. It was high car- 
nival for rum, onions, tobacco -spit, long hair 
thick with bear s-grease and ox-marrow, strong 
cigars, poor cologne, banter, and blasphemy. 
You could no more doubt the high morality 
of the races if you looked at the horses, for 
they were well - dressed, drank nothing but 
water, and used no bad lano-uao^e. When the 
two favorite race-horses sped round the track, 
nostril to nostril, flank to flank, Mrs. Simington 
wanted to bet, and Mr. Simington threw up his 
hat, and she said, " Did you ever ? " and he an- 
sv/ered, " No ! I never did ! " 

That night, as they were about to retire, a 
loud rap was heard at their door. Frank, in a 
state of beastly intoxication was ushered in by 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 307 

Dallas Clifford, himself only a few degrees less 
damaged. They had bodi been at die horse- 
race, and since dieir return had tarried at the 
bar. As Frank's hat fell off, there was seen 
across his forehead a long gash made by the 
glass of an enraged comrade, because Frank, 
having lost a bet, had refused to pay up. Some 
one had relieved him of his gold watch, and, 
splashed with mud and vomit, he fell over at 
the feet of his father and mother, the only son 
of the Simingtons. The truth was, that during 
all the weeks of their stay, Frank, in order to 
throw off e7i7iui and keep up his spirits, had 
made frequent visits to the bar-room, drinking 
with all his new acquaintances. Dallas Clifford 
drank even more, but had a constitution not so 
easily capsized. Indeed, after his fifth glass of 
old Otard he won a bet by successfully walking 
a crack in the floor. 

We have noticed around many of our water- 
ing-places a class of fast young men with faces 
flushed, and eyes bloodshot, and hair exces- 
sively oiled, and whiskers extremely curled, 
and handkerchief furiously perfumed, and 
breath that dashes the air with odors of mint- 



308 SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

julep and a destroyed stomach. They watch 
about the door for new-comers, make up their 
mind whether a young man has money, invite 
him to drink, coax him to throw dice, smite his 
ear with uncleanness, poison his imagination, 
undermine his health, and plunge their vultur- 
ous beak into the vitals of his soul. Frank, 
through expectation of heiring large property, 
had for some time been going down, and the 
six weeks passed at the fashionable watering- 
place fastened on him a chain which he was 
never to break. He was going with lightning 
speed on a down grade, spent the most of the 
next six months at saloons, and died of deliri- 
um tremens on Rittenhouse Square, his last 
moments haunted by such terrors, that to 
drown his shrieks, the neighbors for a block 
around held their ears, and prayed God that 
their own sons might be saved from the dissi- 
pations of fashionable watering-places. 

But I must not go so fast. You want to 
know whether the law -student and Matilda 
ever got back from their floral excursion ? 
No, never ; they are hunting flowers yet, and 
always finding them in pairs ; plucking them 



OF WATERING-PLACES. 309 

in all the walks of life, by streams of gladness, 
on hills of joy, in shady nooks. They could 
find nettles, and wasps, and colopendra, if so 
they desired. They are not hunting for these. 
They are looking for flowers ; and so there is 
the breath of the evening primrose in their 
conversation, and the distillation of sweet-alys- 
sum in their demeanor, and the aroma of phlox 
in their disposition. They are hunting flowers 
to-day In the door-yard of a plain house on the 
outskirts of the village. Last night, he, who 
was a year ago a law-student, plead in the 
court-room for a man's life, and plead in such 
tones of surpassing tenderness and power, 
that this morning his table was covered with 
congratulatory notes from old members of the 
bar, saying that the like of it they had never 
heard, and prophesying topmost eminence In 
'his profession ; and people who have wrongs 
to right, and estates to settle, and causes to 
plead, have been coming in all day to give him 
retainers. The young man is as modest now 
as on the evening when he wandered up with 
his big hands from the Brodwell House to 
witness the "hop." And Matilda talks so 



3IC SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS 

much of the kindness of God that her mother 
still calls her a Methodist. Indeed, when this 
young husband and wife go out to hunt flowers, 
they do not look for anything large or preten- 
tious, but, strolling along on the grass, are apt 
to come upon a nest of violets. 

Do you want to know the sequel of Dallas 
Clifford's demeanor ? At the Springs he never 
appeared before Blanche until his breath had 
been properly disguised, and the last mark of 
rowdyism was brushed off. At the close of 
the six weeks, and a few days before the Siming- 
tons took their departure, affairs between Dal- 
las and Blanche came to a settlement. Much 
of the talk about blushes, awful silences, and 
faintings at such a crisis is an invention of 
story -writers. The last time a sham lady 
would faint is at such a juncture, especially if 
it were a good offer. 

But one thing was certain : about two 
months afterward, the mansion on Ritten- 
house Square was lighted for a wedding. 
The carriages reached a block each way. 
Everybody said that Blanche looked beauti- 
ful. Dallas Clifford took her hand, and vowed 



OF WATERING-PLACES, 3II 

before Almighty God, and a great cloud of wit- 
nesses, that he would love, cherish, and pro- 
tect. 

The wine poured from the bottles, and 
foamed in the beakers, and glowed under the 
chandeliers. Dallas Clifford drank with all ; 
drank again and again. Drank with old and 
young. Drank with brothers and sisters. 
Drank until Blanche besought him to take no 
more. Drank till his tongue was thick, and 
his knees weakened, and the banquet swam 
away from his vision, and he was carried up 
stairs, struggling, hooping, and cursing. Oh ! 
there was an unseen Hand writing on that 
gilded wall terrible meanings. There was a 
serpent that put its tongue from that basket 
of grapes on the table. On the smoke of the 
costly viands an evil spirit floated. Instead of 
the ring in the bride's cake, there was an iron 
chain. Those red drops on the table were not 
so much spilled wine as blood. Louder than 
the guffaw of laughter arose the hiccough of 
despair. 



fTTf^ 




SWALLOWING A FLY. 




COUNTRY meeting-house. A mid- 
summer Sabbath. The air lazy and 
I warm. The grave-yard around about 
oppressively still, the white slabs here and 
there shining in the light like the drifted 
snows of death, and not a grass - blade rust- 
ling as though a sleeper had stirred in his 
dream. 

Clap -boards of the church weather-beaten, 
and very much boiled, either by bumble - bees, 
or long sermons, probably the former, as the 
puncture was on the outside, instead of the in. 
Farmers, worn out with harvesting, excessively 
soothed by the services into dreaming of the 
good time coming, when wheat shall be worth 

twice as much to the bushel, and a basket of 

312 



SWALLOW/iVG A FLY. 313 

fresh - laid eggs will buy a Sunday jacket for a 
boy. 

We had come to the middle of our sermon, 
when a large fly, taking advantage of the 
opened mouth of the speaker, darted into our 
throat. The crisis was upon us. Shall we 
cough and eject this impertinent intruder, or 
let him silently have his way ? We had no 
precedent to guide us. We knew not what 
the fathers of the church did in like circum- 
stances, or the mothers either. We are not 
informed that Chrysostom ever turned himself 
into a fly-trap. We knew not what the Synod 
of Dort would have said to a minister's eating 
flies durincr reliofious services. 

We saw the unfairness of taking advantage 
of a fly in such straitened circumstances. It 
may have been a blind fly, and not have known 
where it was going. It may have been a 
scientific fly, and only experimenting with air 
currents. It may have been a reckless fly, 
doing what he soon would be sorry for, or a 
young fly, and gone a-sailing on Sunday with- 
out his mother's consent. 

Beside this, we are not fond of flies prepared 
27 



314 SWALLO WING A FL V. 

in that way. We have, no doubt, often taken 
them preserved in blackberry jam, or, in the 
poorly lighted eating - house, taken them done 
up in Stewart's sirup. But fly in the raw was 
a diet from which we recoiled. We would 
have preferred it roasted, or fried, or panned, 
or baked, and then to have chosen our favorite 
part, the upper joint, and a little of the breast, 
if you please, sir. But, no ; it was wings, pro- 
boscis, feet, poisers, and alimentary canal. 
There was no choice ; it was all, or none. 

We foresaw the excitement and disturbance 
we would make, and the probability of losing 
our thread of discourse, if we undertook a 
series of coughs, chokings, and expectorations, 
and that, after all our efforts, we might be 
unsuccessful, and end the affray with a fly's 
wing on our lip, and a leg in the windpipe, and 
the most unsavory part of it all under the 
toneue. 

We concluded to take down the nuisance. 
We rallied all our energies. It was the most 
animated passage in all our discourse. We 
were not at all hungry for anything, much less 
for such hastily prepared viands. We found 



SWALLOWING A FLY. 315 

It no easy job. The fly evidently wanted to 
back out. "No!" we said within ourselves. 
"Too late to retreat. You are In for It now!" 
We addressed It In the words of Noah to the 
orang - outang, as It was about entering the 
Ark, and lingered too long at the door, " Go 
In, sir — go In !" 

And so we conquered, giving a warning 
to flies and men that it is easier to get into 
trouble than to get out again. We have never 
mentioned the above circumstance before ; we 
felt it a delicate subject. But all the fly's friends 
are dead, and we can slander It as much as we 
please, and there Is no danger now. We have 
had the thing on our mind ever since we had 
It on our stomach, and so we come to this con- 
fessional. 

You acknowledge that we did the wisest 
thing that could be done ; and yet how many 
people spend their time in elaborate, and 
long-continued, and convulsive ejection of 
flies which they ought to swallow and have 
done with. 

Your husband's thoughtlessness Is an ex- 
ceeding annoyance. He is a good man, no 



3l6 SWALLOWING A FLY. 

better husband since Adam gave up a spare 
rib as a nucleus around which to gather a 
woman. But he is careless about where he 
throws his slippers. On the top of one of 
your best parlor books he has laid a plug of 
pig - tail tobacco. For fifteen years you have 
lectured him about leaving the newspaper on 
the floor. Do not let such little things inter- 
fere with your domestic peace. Better swallow 
the fly, and have done with it. 

Here is a critic, to you a perpetual annoy- 
ance. He has no great capacity himself, but 
he keeps up a constant buzzing. You write a 
book, he caricatures it. You make a speech, 
he sneers at it. You never open your mouth 
but he flies into it. You have used up a 
magazine of powder in trying to curtail the 
sphere of that insect. You chased him around 
the corner of a Quarterly Review. You 
hounded him out from the cellar of a news- 
paper. You stop the urgent work of life to 
catch one poor fly — the Cincinnati Express 
train stopping at midnight to send a brakeman 
ahead with flag and lantern to scare the mos- 



SWALLOWING A FLY. 317 

quitos off the track ; a " Swamp - Angel " out 
a-gunning for rats. 

It never pays to hunt a fly. You clutch at 
him. You sweep your hand convulsively 
through the air. You wait till he alights on 
your face, and then give a fierce slap on the 
place where he was. You slyly wait till he 
crawls up your sleeve, and then give a violent 
crush to the folds of your coat, to find out that 
it was a different fly from the one you were 
searching after. That one sits laughing at 
your vexation from the tip of your nose. 

Apothecaries advertise insect-exterminators ; 
but if in summer-time we set a glass to catch 
flies, for every one we kill there are twelve 
coroners called to sit as jury of inquest ; and 
no sooner does one disappear under our fell 
pursuit, than all its brothers, sisters, nephews, 
nieces, and second cousins come out to see 
what in the world is the matter. So with the 
unclean critics that crawl over an author's 
head. You cannot destroy them with blud- 
geons. There is a time in a schoolboy's his- 
tory when a fine-tooth comb will give him more 

relief than a whole park of artillery. O man ! 
27* 



3l8 SWALLOWING A FLY. 

go on with your life - work ! If, opening your 
mouth to say the thing that ought to be said, a 
fly dart in, swallow it ! 

The current of your happiness is often 
choked up by trifles. Your chimney smokes. 
Through the thick vapor you see no blessing 
left. You feel that with the right kind of a 
chimney you could be happy. It would be 
worse if you had no chimney at all, and still 
worse if you had no fire. Household annoy- 
ances multiply the martyrs of the kitchen. 
The want of more pantry room, the need of 
an additional closet, the smallness of the bread- 
tray, the defectiveness of the range, the lack 
of draught in a furnace, a crack in the sauce- 
pan, are flies in the throat. Open your mouth, 
shut your eyes, and gulp down the annoy- 
ances. 

The aforesaid fly, of whose demise I spoke, 
was digested, and turned into muscle and bone, 
and went to preaching himself Vexations 
conquered become additional strength. We 
would all be rich in disposition, if we learned 
to tax for our benefit the things that stick and 
scratch. We ought to collect a tariff on 



SWALLOWING A FLY. 319 

needles and pins. The flower struck of the 
tempest, catches the drop that made it tremble, 
and turns the water Into wine. The battle In, 
and the victory dependent on your next sabre- 
stroke, throw not your armor down to shake a 
gravel from your shoe. The blue fly oi des- 
pondency has choked to death many a giant. 

Had we stopped on the aforesaid day to kill 
the Insect, at the same time we would have 
killed our sermon. We could not waste our 
time on such a combat. Truth ouorht not to 
be wrecked on an Insect's proboscis. You are 
all ordained to some mission by the laying on 
of the hard hands of work, the white hands of 
joy, and the black hands of trouble. Whethei 
your pulpit be blacksmith's anvil, or carpenter's 
bench, or merchant's counter, do not stop for 
a fly. 

Our every life Is a sermon. Our birth Is the 
text from which we start. Youth is the Intro- 
duction to the discourse. Durinor our man- 

o 

hood we lay down a few propositions and 
prove them. Some of the passages are dull, 
and some sprightly. Then come Inferences 
and applications. At seventy years we say 



320 SWALLOWING A FLY. 

" Fifthly and Lastly." The Doxology is sung. 
The Benediction is pronounced. The Book 
closed. It is getting cold. Frost on the 
window-pane. Audience gone. Shut up the 
church. Sexton goes home with the key on 
his shoulder. 






SPOILED CHILDREN. 

IJHE old adage that a girl is worth a 
thousand dollars, and a boy worth 
fifteen hundred, is a depreciation of 
values. I warrant that the man who invented 
the theory was a bachelor, or he would not 
have set down the youngsters so far below 
cost. When the poorest child is born, a star 
of joy points down to the manger. 

We are tired of hearing of the duty that 
children owe to their parents. Let some one 
write a disquisition on what parents owe to 
their children. What though they do upset 
things, and chase the cats, and eat themselves 
into colic with green apples, and empty the 
castor of sweet-oil into the gravy, and bedaub 
their hands with tar? Grown people have the 

V 321 



322 SPOILED CHILDREN. 

privilege of larger difficulties, and will you not 
let the children have a few smaller predica- 
ments ? How can we ever pay them for the 
prattle that drives our cares away, and the 
shower of soft flaxen curls on our hot cheek, 
and the flowers with which they have strewn 
our way, plucking them from the margin of 
their cradles, and the opening with little hands 
of doors into new dispensations of love ? 

A well-regulated home is a millennium on a 
small scale — the lion and leopard nature by 
infantile stroke subdued — and "a little child 
shall lead them." Blessed the pillow of the 
trundle-bed on which rests the young head 
that never ached ! Blessed the day whose 
morning is wakened by the patter of little feet! 
Blessed the heart from which all the soreness 
is drawn out by the soft hand of a babe ! 

But there are children which have been so 
thoroughly spoiled they are a terror to the 
community. As you are about to enter your 
neighbor's door, his turbulent boy will come at 
you with the plunge of a buffalo, pitching his 
head into your diaphragm. He will in the 
night stretch a rope from tree to tree to dislo- 



SPOILED CHILDREN. 323 

cate your hat, or give some passing citizen a 
sudden halt as the rope catches at the throat, 
and he is hung before his time. They can, in 
a day, break more toys, sHt more kites, lose 
more marbles than all the fathers and mothers 
of the neighborhood could restore in a week. 
They talk roughly, make old people stop to let 
them pass, upset the little girl's school-basket, 
and make themselves universally disagreeable. 
You feel as if you would like to get hold of 
them just for once, or in their behalf call on 
the firm of Birch & Spank. 

It is easy enough to spoil a child. No great 
art is demanded. Only three or four things 
are requisite to complete the work. Make all 
the nurses wait on him and fly at his bidding. 
Let him learn never to go for a drink, but always 
have it brought to him. At ten years of age 
have Bridoret tie his shoe-strines. Let him 
Strike auntie because she will not get him a 
sugar -plum. He will soon learn that the 
house is his realm, and he is to rule it. He 
will come up into manhood one of those pre- 
cious spirits that demand obeisance and ser- 
vice, and with the theory that the world is 



324 SPOILED CHILDREN. 

his oyster, which with knife he will proceed 
to open. 

If that does not spoil him, buy him a horse. 
It is exhilarating and enlarging for a man to 
own such an animal. A good horseback ride 
shakes up the liver and helps the man to be 
virtuous, for it is almost impossible to be good, 
with too much bile, an enlarged spleen, or a 
stomach off duty. We congratulate any man 
who can afford to own a horse ; but if a boy 
own one, he will probably ride on it to destruc- 
tion. He will stop at the tavern for drinks. 
He will bet at the races. There will be room 
enouofh in the same saddle for idleness and 
dissipation to ride, one of them before, and 
one of them behind. The bit will not be 
strong enough to rein in. at the right place. 
There are men who all their lives have been 
going down hill, and the reason is that in boy- 
hood they sprang astride a horse, and got 
going so fast that they have never been able 
to stop. 

But if the child be insensible to all such 
efforts to spoil him, try the plan of never say- 
ing anything encouraging to him. If he do 



SPOILED CHILDREN. 325 

wrong, thrash him soundly ; but if he do well, 
keep on reading the newspaper, pretending 
not to see him. There are excellent people, 
who, through fear of producing childish vanity, 
are unresponsive to the very best endeavor. 
When a child earns parental applause he 
ought to have it. If he get up head at school, 
give him a book or an apple. If he saw a 
bully on the play-ground trampling on a sickly 
boy, and your son took the bully by the throat 
so tightly that he became a little variegated in 
color, praise your boy, and let him know that 
you love to have him the champion of the 
weak. Perhaps you would not do right a day, 
if you had no more prospect of reward than 
that which you have given him. If on com- 
mencement-day he make the best speech, or 
read the best essay, tell him of it. Truth is 
always harmless, and the more you use of it 
the better. If your daughter at the conserva- 
tory take the palm, give her a new piece of 
music, a ring, a kiss, or a blessing. 

But if you have a child invulnerable to all 
other influences, and he cannot be spoiled by 

any means already recommended, give him 
28 



326 SPOILED CHILDREN. 

plenty of money, without any questions as to 
what he does with it. The fare is cheap on 
the road between here and Smashupton. I 
have known boys with five dollars to pay their 
way clear through, and make all the connec- 
tions on the " Grand Trunk " route to per- 
dition. We know not why loose cash in a 
boy's pocket Is called pin money, unless be- 
cause it often sticks a hole into his habits. 
First he will buy raisins, then almonds, then a 
whisk cane, then a breast-pin, then cigars, then 
a keg of "lager," then a ticket for a drunken 
excursion, and there may possibly be money 
enough left for the father to buy for his boy a 
coffin. 

Let children know something of the worth of 
money, by earning it. Over-pay them If you 
will, but let them get some idea of equivalents. 
If they get distorted notions of values at the 
start, they will never be righted. Daniel Web- 
ster knew everything except how to use money. 
From boyhood he had things mixed up. His 
mother gave him and Ezekiel ijioney for Fourth 
of July. As the boys came back from the vil- 
lage, the mother said, " Daniel, what did you 



SPOILED CHILDREN. 32/ 

buy with your money ? " and he answered : " I 
bought a cake and a candy, and some beer, 
and some fire -crackers." Then turning to 
Ezeklel she said, "What did you buy with 
your money?.." "Oh," said Ezekiel, ''Daniel 
borrowed mine." 

On the other hand, it is a ruinous poHcy to 
be parsimonious with children. If a boy find 
that a parent has plenty of money, and he, the 
boy, has none, the temptation will be to steal 
the first cent he can lay his hand on. Oh, the 
joy that five pennies can buy for a boy ! They 
seem to open before him a Paradise of liquor- 
ice-drops and cream - candy. You cannot in 
after-life buy so much superb satisfaction with 
^^^ thousand dollars as you bought with your 
first five cents. Children need enough money, 
but not a superfluity. Freshets wash away 
more cornfields than they culture. 

Boys and girls are often spoiled by parental 
gloom. The father never unbends. The mo- 
ther's rheumatism hurts so, she does not see 
how little Maggie can ever laugh. Childish 
curiosity is denounced as impertinence. The 
parlor is a Parliament, and everything in ever- 



328 SPOILED CHILDREN. 

lasting order. Balls and tops in that house 
are a nuisance, and the pap that the boy is 
expected most to relish is Geometry, a little 
sweetened with the chalk of blackboards. 
For cheerful reading the father would recom- 
mend "Young's Night Thoughts" and Her- 
vey's " Meditations among the Tombs." 

At the first chance the boy will break loose. 
With one grand leap he will clear the cate- 
chisms. He will burst away into all riotous 
living. He will be so glad to get out of Egypt 
that he will jump into the Red Sea. The 
hardest colts to catch are those that have a 
long while been locked up. Restraints are 
necessary, but there must be some outlet. Too 
high a dam will overflow all the meadows. 

A sure way of spoiling children is by sur- 
feiting them with food. Many of them have 
been stuffed to death. The mother spoke of it 
as a grand achievement that her boy ate ten 
eggs at Easter. He waddles across the room 
under burdens of porter-house steak and 
plum-pudding enough to swamp a day-laborer. 
He runs his arm up to the elbow in the jar of 
blackberry jam, and pulls it out amid the roar 



SPOILED CHILDREN. 329 

of the whole household thrown Into hysterics 
with the witticism. After a while he has a 
pain, then he gets " the dumps," soon he will 
be troubled with Indigestion, occasionally he 
will have a fit, and last of all he gets a fever, 
and dies. The parents have no Idea that they 
are to blame. Beautiful verses are cut on the 
tombstone, when, If the truth had been told, 
the epitaph would have read — 

Killed by Apple Dumplings ! 




28* 




.130 



NIBBLINGS 

IN 

FOREIGN PASTURES. 




33^ 




THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 




THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 




E had built up all the stones of sea- 
faring men into one tremendous 
imagining of the ocean. We went 
on board, ready for typhoons and euroclydons. 
We thought the sea a monster, with ships in 
its maw, and hurricanes in its mane. In our 
ten days' voyage, we have seen it in various 
moods, but have been impressed with nothing 
so much as the smile of the sea. While we 
have not found the poetic " cradle of the deep," 
we have concluded that the sea is only a vigor- 
ous old nurse that jolts the child up and down 
on a hard knee, without much reference to how 
much it can endure. 

We cannot forget the briohtness of the 
morning in which we came down the bay, fol- 

333 



334 THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 

lowed to Sandy Hook by five hundred friends, 
lashing us out to sea with waving pocket- 
handkerchiefs, and pelting us with their huzzas. 
The sun set, and the moon took the veil of a 
nun and went into the dark turrets of midnio^ht 
cloud, and the stars dropped their flakes of 
light into the water, and melted into the black- 
ness ; but the sunlight of the cheery faces at 
the starting has shone on three thousand miles 
of water. So many friendly hands helped 
steady the ship, and the breath of so many 
voices filled the sails, which, by the help of the 
great screw, are bearing us onward. 

Though a gentleman has pronounced the 
sea one vast dose of ipecac, and though it may 
betray us in the future, we set down the sea as 
one of our best friends. We never were 
treated so well in all our life. We have had, 
since we started, some wild tossing, but the 
waves are swarthy giants, and you must expect 
that their play will not be that of kittens, but 
of a lioness with her cubs, or a leviathan with 
its young. When Titans play ball, they throw 
rocks. The heavy surge which rolls the ship 
while I write is probably only the effort of the 



THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 335 

sea to stop laughing. It has been In a grand 
gale, and Its sides are heaving yet with the 
uproarious mirthfulness. 

There are physical constitutions that will not 
harmonize with the water ; but one - half the 
things that writers record against the sea Is 
the result of their ow^n intemperance. The 
sea-air rouses a wolf of an appetite, and nine- 
tenths of the passengers turn Into meat-stuffers. 
From morn till night, down go the avalanches 
of provender. Invalids, on their way to Europe 
for the cure of dyspepsia, are seen gorging 
themselves at nine o'clock, at twelve, at four, 
at seven, and at ten. I hear men who, at 
eleven o'clock last night, took pigeons, and 
chickens, and claret, and Hock, and Burgundy, 
and Old Tom, and Cheshire cheese, and sar- 
dines, and anchovies, and grouse, and gravies, 
complaining that they feel miserable this morn- 
ing. Much of the sea-sickness is an Insurrec- 
tion of the stomach against too great Instal- 
ments of salmon, and raisins, and roast turkey, 
and nuts, and damson pies, and an infinity of 
pastry. One-half of the same dissipation on 
land would necessitate the attendance of the 



33^ THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 

family doctor, and two nurses on the side of 
the bed to keep the howling patient from leap- 
ing out of the third-story window. 

Oh, the joy of the sea ! The vessel bounds 
like a racer on the " home - stretch," bending 
into the bit, its sides flanked with the foam, and 
its white mane flying on the wild wind. We 
have dropped the world behind us. Going to 
Long Branch, or Sharon Springs, our letters 
come, and the papers, but it would be hard for 
cares to keep up with a Cunard steamer. 
They cannot swim. They could not live an 
hour in such a surf They have been drowned 
out, and are forgotten. 

On the land, when morning comes, it seems 
to run up from the other side of the hills, and, 
with its face red from climbing, stands looking 
through the pines and cedars. On the sea, it 
comes down from God out of heaven on lad- 
ders of light to bathe in the water, the waves 
dripping from her ringlets and sash of fire, or 
throwing up their white caps to greet her, and 
the sea-gull alights on her brow at the glorious 
baptism. No smoke of factory on the clear 
air. No shuffling of weary feet on the glass 



THE SMILE OF THE SEA. Z'^7 

of the water - pavement. But Him of Gene- 
sareth setting his foot in the snow of the surf, 
and stroking the neck of the waves as they 
lick His feet and play about Him. 

He who goes to sea with keen appreciation 
of the ludicrous will not be able to keep his 
gravity. We are not conscious of having, in 
any three months of our lives, so tested the 
strength of our buttons as on this ten days' 
trip. We confess our incapacity to see with- 
out demonstration of merriment the unheard- 
of posture taken by passengers on a rocking 
ship. Think of bashful ladies being violently 
pitched into the arms of the boatswain, and of 
a man like myself escorting two elegant ladies 
across the slippery deck, till, with one sudden 
lurch, we are driven from starboard to port, 
with most unclerical sprawl, in one grand crash 
of crinoline and whiskers, chignon catching in 
overcoat - pocket, and our head entangled in 
the folds of a rio^olette. Imagine the steward 
emptying a bowl of turtle-soup into the lap of 
a New York exquisite ; or one not accustomed 
to angling, fishing for herring under an upset 

dinner - plate. Consider our agitation, when, 

29 



33^ THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 

in the morning, after waking our companion 
with the snatch of some famiHar tunes, we 
found her diving out of the berth head -fore- 
most, to the tune of " Star Spangled Banner," 
and Dundee, with the variations. If, in all the 
ships on the deep, there are so many grotesque 
goings-on as in our vessel, we wonder not that 
this morning the sea from New York to Liver- 
pool is shaking its sides with roistering merri- 
ment. 

But the grandest smile of the sea is, after a 
rough day, in the phosphorescence that blazes 
from horizon to horizon. Some tell us it is the 
spawn of the jelly - fish, and some that it is a 
collection of marin^ insects ; but those who 
say they do not know what it is probably come 
nearest the truth. The prow of the vessel 
breaks it up into two great sheaves of light, 
and the glory keeps up a running fire along 
the beam's - end till the mind falls back be- 
numbed, unable longer to take in the splendor. 
In one direction, it is like a vast mosaic, and 
yonder it now quivers the " lightning of the 
sea." Here it is crystal inlaid with jet; or the 



THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 339 

eyes of sea - serpents flashing through the 
hissing waters ; or a tall wave robed in white, 
flying, with long trail, toward the East ; or the 
tossing up in the palm of the ocean a handful 
of opals, answered by the sparkle on one finger 
of foam ; and then the long -restrained beauty 
breaking out into a whole sea of fire. On this 
suspended bridge many of the glories of the 
earth and heaven come out to greet each other, 
and stand beckoning to ship, and shore, and 
sky, for all the rest of the glories to come and 
join them. Meanwhile, the vessel plunges its 
proboscis into the deep, and casts carelessly 
aside into the darkness more gems than ever 
came from Brazil and Golconda. Historians 
think it worth recording, that, at an ancient 
feast, a pearl was dissolved in the wine, and 
drank by a royal woman ; but a million pearls 
are dissolved at this phosphorescent banquet 
of the deep, around whose board all nations 
sit drinking. The stars are to drop like 
blasted figs, and the sun is to be snuffed 
out; but when the ocean dies, its spirit will 
arise In white robe of mist, and lie down 



340 THE SMILE OF THE SEA. 

before the throne of God, " a sea of glass 
miiigled with fire!' 

N. B. — I hereby reserve the privilege of 
taking back all I have said, if, on my way to 
America, the sea does not behave itself well. 






POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 

[VERY intelligent American, in cross- 
ing the ocean, has a lively desire of 
confrontinof the works of the old 
masters of painting. He wants to see Pous- 
sin and Correggio as certainly as Ben Lomond 
and the Splugen Pass. 

If he happen first to look in upon the pic- 
ture gallery of Holyrood, where the faces of a 
hundred Scottish kings are hung, his first feel- 
ing will be one of gladness that they are all 
dead, for such another villanous brood of 
faces no man ever looked upon. Such eyes, 
such mouths, such noses, would confound any 
rogues' -gallery in any city. We believe the 
whole gallery a slander by 4 Flemish master, 



29 



341 



342 POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 

and that Scotland never had any such atro- 
cious men or women to rule over her. We 
say nothing against homely features in the 
abstract. Any man has an inalienable right 
to carry such a nose as he will. That is a 
right patent on the face of it. Lord Welling- 
ton had a hooked nose, and Thackeray a turn- 
up nose, and Robert Bruce a nose all over the 
face ; but to have a nose that looks as if in- 
tended to be thrust into everybody else's busi- 
ness, or to be stuck up in scorn, or to blossom 
with dissipations, or to snuff at the cause of 
virtue — we protest against any man's right to 
carry such an infamous proboscis. We are 
certain that no such-looking faces as we see in 
Holyrood ought to have been perpetuated by 
a master. Let the extinct species of such 
megatheriums never hear the clang of the 
crowbar. It is not fair that the Royal College 
of Surgeons should keep the cancer of which 
Napoleon died. There should be no immor- 
tality of cancers. 

But no one can forget the place, or the day, 
or the hour, when he first ofazed on a genuine 
work of one of the old masters. We had 



POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 343 

seen for years pieces of canvas which pre- 
tended to have come from Italy or Germany, 
and to be three or four hundred years old. 
The chief glory of them was that they were 
cracked, and wrinkled, and dull, and inexpli- 
cable, and had great antiquity of varnish, im- 
mensity of daub, and infinity of botch. The 
great-grandfather of the exhibitor got the 
heirloom from a Portuguese peddler, who was 
wrecked at Venice in the middle of the last 
century, and went ashore just as one of the 
descendants of the celebrated Braggadocia 
Thundergusto, of the fourteenth century, was 
hard up for money, and must have a drink or 
die. 

But I find in my diary this record : 

''June 30th, 1870, at two o'clock P. M., in the National 
Gallery of Scotland, I first saw a 'Titian.' 

"July 9th, 1870, at ten minutes of three o'clock, in the 
National Gallery of England, first saw a ' Murillo.' " 

It seemed to require a sacred subject to call 
out the eenius of the old masters. On secu- 
lar themes they often failed. They knew not, 
as do the moderns, how to pluck up a plant 
from the earth and make it live on canvas. 



344 POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 

Delmonico, for the adornment of a shoulder 
of bacon, with his knife cuts out of a red beet 
a rose more natural than the forget-me-not 
of old Sigismond Holbein, or the lily by Lo 
Spagna. Their battle - pieces are a Cincin- 
nati slaughter-house. Their Cupid scenes are 
merely a nursery of babies that rush out from 
the bath-tub into the hall before their mother 
has time to dress them. The masters failed 
with a fiddle, but shook the earth with a diapa- 
son. Give them a " Crucifixion " or a " Judg- 
ment," and they triumph. 

Indeed, when men paint or write or act from 
the heart, they are potent. By the time that a 
thought, starting from the artist's brain, can 
come down through the neck into the shoulder, 
and through the right arm to the fingers, and 
off the finger-tips to the point of the pencil, it 
has lost its momentum, and languishes on the 
canvas ; but a thought that starts from the 
brain, and streams to the heart, there to be 
taken with a strong throb, and as by the 
stroke of a piston, forced through the arm to 
the canvas, arrives unspent and redoubled. 
The old masters succeeded not in depicting 



POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 345 

what they thought so well as In what they felt. 
Thoughts are often hard, and green, and 
touorh, till the warm sunshine of the heart 
ripens them. 

Most of the ancient artists tried their hand 
at the Virgin and the Child, always evidencing 
their own nationality In the style of infantile 
beauty selected. The Dutch school gives a 
Dutch child, the Roman school a Roman child, 
the Spanish school a Spanish child. Rubens's 
Christ was not born at Bethlehem, but at Ant- 
werp. And as parents are not apt to under- 
value their children, It is probable that they 
took the model which sat in their own nursery, 
gathering around it their own ideal of the in- 
fant Jesus. Francesco Tacconi represents the 
Holy Child as very thoughtful, a young philos- 
opher at one year of age, with very red hair. 
VIvarIni gives us a startled child. Duccio 
paints for us a child wrapped up in admiration 
of Its mother. But Lo Spagna gives us the 
look of a glad child that would romp If It were 
not afraid of jumping out of the picture. 
Why not a glad child ? The burdens had not 
yet rolled over on him. Those were good 



34^ POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 

days to him. Joseph and Mary walked and 
trudged, but he always had a soft carriage to 
ride in — that of his mother's bosom. He had 
enough to wear, for he was wrapped in swad- 
dling - clothes. He probably had enough to 
eat, for mothers in those days were not pinched 
to death with corsets, and so the child need 
not go outside of its mother's arms for abun- 
dant supply. 

But any pleasant afternoon when the chil- 
dren of our city are out taking an airing, I 
could find a score of infanf faces more like 
Jesus than any I have seen on ancient canvas. 
Perhaps, after a while, an American artist will 
give us the Virgin and the Child. It would be 
more apt to be impartial than that of any of 
the ancients. They put their own nationality 
into the picture, and it was a German Christ, 
or a Venetian Christ, or a Tuscan Christ ; but 
the American, having in him the blood of many 
lands, and in his face a commingling of the 
features of all nations, when he gives us upon 
canvas Mary and the Child, it will be a world's 
affection bending over a world's Christ. 

Not only in the Madonnas, but in nearly all 



POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 34/ 

the chief pictures, the painters show their 
liking for children. You see a child peeping 
out somewhere. If there is no other way to get 
him into the picture, Paul Veronese will slide 
him down in the shape of a cherub on a plank 
of sunbeams. 

You would hardly expect children in Raph- 
ael's " Peter and John Healing the Lame 
Man." You expect that the majesty of the 
scene will crowd out all familiarities. You 
would say that children ought to get out of 
the way when such exciting work is going on. 
There lies a lame man, his hand in the hand 
of the apostle. The sufferer looks up with a 
face that has anguish scorched into every fea- 
ture; for though born a cripple, he had never 
got used to it. No man that I ever saw be- 
fore wanted so much to get well. His twisted 
foot no human doctor could straighten. The 
muscles that bound it on the wrong side 
might have been cut, but the muscles on the 
other side would not have drawn it back to 
the right place. There lay the helpless, dis- 
torted foot, making its dumb prayer. Yonder 
is another deformed beggar hobbling up. If 



348 POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 

Peter is successful with the first case, this 
lame man would like to have his limbs looked 
at. Still, he is not anxious. He is angry 
with the world and angry with heaven. His 
manner seems to say : " How did God dare 
to make me thus ? " The wretch had been 
kicked off of people's steps, and jeered at by 
the boys of the town, till he did not much 
care what became of him. A face full of 
everything hard, bitter, malicious. He is 
ready either to receive help at the hand of 
the apostle, or to strike him with the crutch. 
Does not much believe there is any cure, does 
not much care. Has not heard a kind word 
for twenty years, and would not be at all sur- 
prised if he were howled away now. A foul 
face — even the hair on the chin curls with 
scorn. He has the fierceness of an adder, 
which, trod on, curls up to bite its pursuer. 
The distortion of the body has struck in and 
deformed the soul. You feel that your only 
safety in his presence is that he cannot walk. 
His figure haunts a man for days. 

It is a scene that puts the heart in a vice, 
and starts the cold sweat on the forehead, and 



POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 349 

holds you with a spell from which you are try- 
ing to break away, until you look just over 
the head of the vicious mendicant, and see the 
clear, innocent face of a child hushed in its 
mother's arms, and then look to the left, and 
see two round-limbed children boundincr into 
the scene, wondering- what is the matter. 
With their dimpled hands, they pull out the 
thorns of the picture. It is a stubborn sea of 
trouble that will not divide when four baby 
feet go paddling in it. We are glad that 
Raphael did not choose for the picture 
cherubs with wings fastened at the backbone, 
ready any moment to fly away with them, but 
children that look as if they had come to stay. 
Rather thinly dressed, indeed, for cool wea- 
ther. Raphael's picture-children did not cost 
him much for clothes. You know it was a 
warm climate. 

Though a bachelor, Raphael knew the worth 
of children in a picture. With their little 
hands they open the inside door of the heart, 
and let us pass in, when otherwise we might 
have been kept standing on the cold steps, 
looking at the corbeils and caryatides of the 
30 



350 



POWER OF A CHILD'S FACE. 



outside architecture. It was a little maid that 
directed Naaman to the Jordan for healing, 
and it is a child in the picture that shows the 
leper of harsh criticism where to wash his 
scales off. It is by the introduction of chil- 
dren into their paintings that Canaletto gives 
warmth to the ice-white castles of Venice, and 
Gainsborough simplicity to the hollowness of 
a watering-place, and Turner pathos to the 
" Decline of Carthage," and Ruysdale life to a 
dead landscape ; and Giotto and Tacconi and 
Orcagna and Joshua Reynolds follow in the 
track of a boy's foot. " And a little child shall 
lead them." 



^V-^P??:r 






EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

|USHED at the rate of sixty miles 
an hour into the capital of Scotland, 
and set down with the shriek of 
the steam - whistle — compared with which a 
sound of an American locomotive is a harpsi- 
chord — here we are. 

The sensitive traveller will not sleep the 
first night in Edinburgh, and will do well if the 
second night he can be composed. The rest- 
lessness may not be ascribed to a lack of 
comfortable couch, for the art of bed-making 
has been carried to perfection here. You are 
not called, as in many an American hotel, to 
sleep on a promontory of mattresses, not 
certain on which side you may fall off into the 
sea. There are no lumps in the bed that take 

351 



352 EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

you in the middle of the back, or hardnesses 
in the pillow that make you dream like Jacob 
on the stones, barring out the ladder and the 
angels. The foot - board is not so near the 
head -board that the sleeper is all the night 
long reminded of his end. There are no stray 
points of feathers thrust through the linen to 
tickle you under the ribs. The covers do not 
come within just three inches of being large 
enough when you pull them up, making bare 
the foot, or when, by the grasp of the " com- 
fortable " between the large toe and the fatty 
portion of the foot, you pull them down, ex- 
posing the shoulder, so that you fancy, in your 
disturbed slumber, that you are perishing in a 
snow-bank. But a broad, smooth, affluent 
couch, on which you may sublimely roll, reck- 
less of covers, and confident that beyond the 
point at which you stop there is still further 
expanse of comfort and ease. 

But the restlessness will be accounted for 
by the fact that in no city under the sun is 
there so much to excite the memory and the 
imagination. It is a stimulant amounting to 
intoxication. We find gentlemen whose minds 



EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 353 

have been overworked in this city seeking 
mental quiet. As well go to Iceland to get 
warm, or to Borneo to get cool. The Past 
and the Present jostle each other. The shoul- 
der of modern architecture is set against the 
arch of the twelfth century. Antiquity says, " I 
will furnish the ideas," and the Present says, 
*' I will freeze them into stone." You take in 
with one glance " The Abbey," built by Roman 
Catholic David the First, which has for seven 
hundred years sat counting its beads of stone, 
and that modern structure "The Donaldson 
Hospital," a palace of charity, crowned with 
twenty-four turrets, inviting to its blessing the 
poor children of the city, and launching them 
on the world every way equipped — knowledge 
in their heads, grace in their hearts, and money 
in their pockets. While in one part of the 
castle you are examining old " Mons Meg," 
the big gun that burst in the time of James 
the Second, you hear from another part of the 
castle the merciless bang of Professor Smythe's 
time -gun, fired off by a wire reaching across 
the city from the Observatory. 

Edinburgh and Boston have each been 
30* 



354 EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

called "the modern Athens." We shall not 
here decide between them. They are much 
alike in literary atmosphere, but at the an- 
tipodes in some respects. In Boston, literature 
has a Unitarian tinge ; in Edinburgh, a Pres- 
byterian. In this Scotch capital, religion, poli- 
tics, science, and literature are inextricably 
mixed. The late Sir James Y. Simpson, M. D., 
whose face Is In all the photographic show- 
windows of the city, and whose life was spent 
in surgery, recently made an address on "Dead 
in Trespasses and Sins ; " and Doctor Brown, 
a practising physician on Rutledge Street, 
wrote of " Paul's Thorn in the Flesh ; " and the 
collection-boxes of the Scotland Bible Society 
are set in the railroad stations ; and Reverend 
Doctor Arnot, last Sabbath, at the close of his 
sermon, turned around and bowed to the 
judges of the court seated in the gallery ; and 
over a door in " Lady Stair's Close " is the 
inscription : " Fear the Lord and depart from 
evil." In this city, acutest analysis could 
hardly tell where literature or politics ends or 
theology begins. But since the brain and the 
heart are only about a foot and a half apart, I 



EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 355 

know not why there should be such effort to 
separate the Intellectual from the spiritual. 
All frank and intense writers on secular 
themes have given us a glimpse of their 
higher faith. We know the theology of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Babing- 
ton Macaulay and William C. Bryant as well 
as that of Jonathan Edwards and Archibald 
Alexander. There is no need that the literati 
of the world go dodging and skulking about 
the pillars of St. Paul as though ashamed to 
be found there. 

Reaching from Edinburgh Castle, throned 
on the rocks, down under the city to the Ab- 
bey of Holyrood, there is an underground 
passage six hundred years old. Queen Vic- 
toria, a few years since, offered a large reward 
to any man who would explore that passage. 
The poor fellow who undertook it choked to 
death in the damps and gases, and the Queen 
withdrew her inducement, lest some one else 
should perish in the undertaking. I would 
that the way between the castle of beauty and 
strength, and the abbey of religion, in all ages, 
were not a dark tunnel difficult of exploration, 



356 EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

but a brilliant causeway, and that we all might 
walk there. 

Let Science and Piety walk with hooked 
arms in the hall of the university, and ivy 
climb over the cathedral wall, and every 
church belfry be an observatory, and learning 
and goodness be so thoroughly intertwined 
and interlocked that every man shall be both 
philosopher and Christian. Then Galileo will 
not only see that " the world moves," but that 
it moves in the right direction ; and the gowned 
professors of the academy and the surpllced 
officials of the chapel will unite their strength 
to shorten the distance between the castle and 
the abbey. 



At this summer season, Edinburgh sleeps 
under a very thin covering of shadows. There 
is no night there. At ten o'clock p. m. I walked 
up on Calton Hill, and saw the city by daylight. 
And the evening and the morning were the 
same day. The American is perplexed as to 
what time he ought to retire, and at four o'clock 
in the morning springs out of bed, feeling that 



EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 35/ 

he must have overslept, till he looks at his 
watch. The day and the night are here twin 
sisters — the one a blonde, the other a bru- 
nette. At this season, when tourists are most 
busy, the curtain does not fall on Edinburgh. 

The city has been compressed into small 
compass, so that it might be under the de- 
fence of the cruns of the Castle. A house ten 
stories high is not an unusual thing. There 
are no "magnificent distances." It is but two 
minutes' walk from the Netherbow to the 
Canongate. It is only ten minutes' ride from 
Holyrood to the Castle. In one short saunter 
you go from examining the Scottish crown in 
the " Jewel-room " on the Hill, down to the 
museum, in which you see the stool that Jenny 
Geddes threw at the head of the bishop. 

The city has a superb belt of what the 
Scotch have chosen to call " Hospitals." They 
are not places where fractures are splintered, 
or physical diseases assaulted ; but are educa- 
tional institutions. Considering ignorance a 
horrible sickness — the wasting away of a 
marasmus, the benumbing of a palsy, the 
sloughing off of a gangrene — public charity 



358 EDINBURGH ASA BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

has erected these " Hospitals " for the cure of 
intellectual malady. 

A printer of the city gave one million fifty 
thousand dollars for the building and mainte- 
nance of one of these institutions, where two 
hundred and twenty poor children are taught. 
The structure is vast and imposing ; battle- 
mented and towered, and embosomed in 
foliage and flowers — strength in the arms of 
beauty, without being shorn of any of its 
locks. 

The John Watson's Hospital, the Orphan 
Hospital, the Gillespie Hospital, the Merchant 
Maiden Hospital, the George Heriot Hospital 
— the surplusage of bequests not yet em- 
ployed, and seemingly not needed for struc- 
tures of the same character — show how 
much the people hate darkness and love light. 
God gave to Edinburgh, as to Solomon, the 
choice of riches, honor, or wisdom. She chose 
wisdom ; and the riches and the honor have 
been thrown in as a bounty. While the anti- 
quarian stands studying the grotesque gar- 
goyles which frown and mow and run out the 
tongue from the venerable roofs and arches 



EDINBURGH AS A B RA IN- S TIM ULA NT. 359 

of the city, I see more to admire in the chubby 
faces of the educated children. 

But, while Edinburgh is preparing for a 
grand future, she is not willing that her dead 
shall fall back into the shadows. With a tight 
grip of fingers in bronze and stone she holds 
on to the men of the past. She has for the 
last thirty years been building monuments, 
and she will keep on building them. As she 
denied the request of the Queen that Dr. 
Simpson be buried in Westminster Abbey, 
Edinburgh will not now put on the limits the 
sculptors who perpetuate him. Walter Scott 
alive, hobbling along the Grassmarket, made 
not so much impression on this city as to-day, 
looking down on Princess Street, from under 
a canopy of stone, one hundred and ninety 
feet high, the dog Bevis at his feet ; while 
breakmg out In sculpture on the sides are the 
" Last Minstrel," and " Lady of the Lake," 
and Meg Merrilies, the queen of witches, with 
her long skinny arms seeming to marshal all 
the apparitions of ghostdom. 

Here dwelt Alexander Smith, destroyed by 
his own mental activity, the fire of his genius 



360 EDINBURGH AS A B R A I N- STIMULA NT. 

consuming not only the sacrifice but the altar; 
and Hugh Miller, who with his stone chisel 
cut his way into the mysteries of the earth 
and the heart of nations ; and Playfair, and 
Dugald Stewart, and Henry Mackenzie, and 
Doctor Blair, and Thomas de Quincy. Here 
Christopher North put on his " sporting- 
jacket," out of the pockets of which he pulled 
for many of us Windermere and the High- 
lands ; his swarthy figure in bronze, now stand- 
ing in the East Gardens, his hair looking like 
the toss of a lion's mane, his eye wild as a 
stormy night on the moors, his apparel as 
sloven as his morals. 

But these men were of the past. The har- 
vest of giants has been reaped. Edinburgh 
has but two or three men of world-wide fame 
remaining. Doctor John Brown, author of 
*' Rab and his Friends," may still be found on 
Rutledge Street ; but he has dropped his royal 
pen, and has no more "Spare Hours " for the 
reading public, now that he gives his entire 
time to his medical profession. If the dogs, 
whose greatest champion he is, knew that he 
had abandoned their cause, they would set up 



EDINBURGH AS A B RA IN- STI MULA NT. 361 

a universal howl, and the spirit of " Rab " 
would come forth to haunt him, wagging 
before him that immortal stump of a tail. 
Though the Doctor has sent his dogs scam- 
pering through every American study, and 
through many a lady's parlor, he has no dog 
left. His last one, Kent by name, was so 
much in danger of being contaminated by the 
more vulgar dogs of the city, that he was sent 
over to Ireland to be companion and defender 
to the Doctor's married daughter. A large 
portrait of " Kent " hangs over the parlor 
mantle on Rutledge Street. You would not 
wonder that all Doctor Brown's dogs have 
been so kind and wise and good, if you only 
knew their master. 

It seems that in one case, at least, his plea for 
unhappy curs has been effectual. Eleven years 
ago a poor and unknown man was buried in 
Gray Friars Churchyard. His dog, " Bobby," 
a Scotch terrier, was one of the mourners. 
Next day he was found lying on the grave ; 
but, as nothing but bronze or stone dogs are 
lawful in such places, Bobby was kicked out of 
the yard. The second morning he was found 
31 



362 EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIMULANT. 

there, and was still more emphatically warned 
to give up his melancholy habits. But when, 
the third morning, he was found on the grave, 
the old curator had compassion, and ever since 
the bereft creature has been taken care of. 
For years he was allowed steaks from an of- 
ficer of the city. I wish that all the dogs that 
live on Government were as worthy. 

We take the train from Edinburgh with a 
heavy heart. We need a year to study this 
city of the past and the present — its cres- 
cents, and mansions, and squares, and monu- 
ments, and palaces ; a city which hovers above 
crags, and dives Into ravines, and climbs preci- 
pices, and shimmers in the blaze of midsum- 
mer noon, and rolls upon the soul a surge of 
associations that break us down" into a heart- 
felt prayer for the peace and happiness of 
Scodand. 






FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 

JVERY man ought to cross the ocean 
at least once to find how many un- 
warranted things have been said 
about it. Those who on the land have never 
imperilled their veracity by mastodonic state- 
ments are so metamorphosed by the first stiff 
breeze off Newfoundland, that they become 
capable of the biggest stories. They see 
billows as high as the Alps, and whales long 
enough to supply a continent with spermaceti, 
and have perilous escapes from sudden anni- 
hilation, and see over the gunwales spectacles 
compared with which the " Flying Dutchman " 
is a North River clam-sloop. 

We have not been able to find some things 
that we expected. We have very often heard 

363 



364 FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 

that sea-sickness makes one feel that he would 
like to be thrown overboard. One day, on our 
ship, there were near a hundred passengers 
whose stomachs had turned sommersets; but 
not one of these people, as far as we could 
detect, would like to have been pitched over- 
board. Indeed, an effort to deposit these 
nauseated Jonahs on the " Fishing Banks " 
would have ended fatally to the perpetrator. 
We saw not one of the sickest patients look- 
ing at the sea as though he would like to get 
into it. Those who were most desperate and 
agonizing in looking over the taffrail for the 
lines of latitude and longitude, held tight fast, 
lest some sudden lurch of the ship should 
precipitate them into the Canaan of water for 
which the great army of the sea-sick are said 
to be longing. 

We have also been told, in many well-rounded 
addresses, that the sails of British and Ameri- 
can commerce ''whiten every sea!' But we 
have averaged during our voyage only about 
two vessels a day. The cry of '' Sail — ho ! " 
is so rare a sound that it brings all the passen- 
gers to their feet. The mere ghost of a 



FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 365 

shroud along the line of the sky calls up all 
the opera - glasses. The most entertaining 
scollops are dropped from the spoon when, 
during the dining-hour, it is announced that a 
ship passes. Let " Fourth of July " orators 
steer clear of the fallacy that the sails of our 
commerce whiten the sea. They make about 
as much impression upon it as a fly crossing 
the ceiling. 

We have been told of the sense of loneli- 
ness, isolation, and almost desolation felt when 
out of sight of land. But we think that In a 
popular steamer such a feeling is Impossible. 
We leave a world behind, but we take a world 
with us. A Hamburg steamer is a portable 
Germany. 

The ship in which we sail Is Berkley Square 
and Fifth Avenue. London ends at the prow, 
Broadway begins at the stern. We have on 
board Fulton Market, and Faneuil Hall, and 
Drury Lane Theatre, and Apsley House. We 
do not any more think of how far we are 
from the shore than we do how far the shore 
Is from us. Though mid-ocean, we are in the 
heart of a city, and hear feet shuffling, and 



366 FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 

hammers pounding, and wheels turning, and 
voices shouting. 

We have not found any of the monotony 
of the deep. We have not seen an iceberg, 
nor a whale, nor a porpoise, nor a flying-fish, 
nor a water-spout ; but in simply watching and 
thinking we have found each day so pleasantly 
occupied that we sorrowed at its speedy termi- 
nation. 

So many styles of character as come to- 
gether on shipboard are a perpetual study. 
Men by the third day turn inside out. (I refer 
to their characters and not to their stomachs.) 
Their generosity or their selfishness, their 
opulence of resource or their paucity, their 
courage or their cowardice, are patent. What 
variety of mission ! This one goes to claim 
a large estate ; this one to culture his taste in 
foreign picture-galleries ; that one to amass a 
fortune ; this one to see what he can learn. 
On some the time hangs heavily, and they be- 
take themselves to the " betting-room." Since 
coming on board, some of them have lost all 
their money by unsuccessful wager. Two or 



FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 367 

three have won everything, and the others 
have lost. They have bet about the speed of 
the ship — bet that it would be over three 
hundred and thirty knots a day, bet that it 
would be less, bet that the number of miles 
run would be an even number, bet that It 
would be odd, bet that the pilot coming aboard 
would step on with his right foot, bet it would 
be his left, bet that gold will be up when we 
get to Queenstown, bet that it would be down, 
bet every week-day, bet on Sunday. 

The surgeon, who read "prayers" for us in 
the Sabbath service, was one of the heaviest 
losers. I am informed, by a credible witness, 
that he took a bet while we were sin^ini.^ the 
psalm during the religious service which he 
was conductinor. God save us from the 
morals and the physic of such a doctor ! 

But take them all in all we never dwelt 
among men and women of finer culture, and 
better heart, and nobler life than our fellow 
passengers. We shall be glad forever that 
on this crystal path of nations we. met 
them. 



368 FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 

The sailors have been to us a perpetual en- 
tertainment. They are always interesting, al- 
ways cheerful, always helpful. Each one has a 
history. Sometimes his life has been a tragedy, 
interspersed with comedy. Our heart goes out 
toward him. In his laugh Is the freedom of 
the sea and the wildness of the wind. We can 
hardly keep from laying hold with these sailor- 
boys, as they bend to their work singing a 
strange song of which we catch here and there 
a stanza such as : 

Away ! Haul away ! Haul away, Joe ! 

Away ! Haul away ! now we are sober. 

Once I lived in Ireland, digging turf and tatoes, 

But now I'm in a packet-ship a-hauling tacks and braces. 

Once I was a waterman and lived at home at ease, 
But now I am a mariner to plough the angry seas. 
I thought I would like a seafaring life, so I bid my 

love adieu. 
And shipped as cook and steward on board the Kangaroo. 
Then I never thought she would prove false, 
Or ever prove untrue, 
When we sailed away from Milfred Bay 
On board the Kangaroo. 
Away ! Haul away ! Haul away, Joe ! 
Away ! Haul away ! Haul away, Joe ! 



FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. 369 

We cannot tell the metre of the songs they 
sing by day and night, but we prefer to call 
it " peculiar metre." We wish for these men 
a safe life-voyage, and a calm harbor at the 
last. Heaven give them a steady foot while 
running up the slippery ratlines to reef the 
topsail ! 





"STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY.*' 




|N board the steamer Java I met an 
English gentleman by the name of 
Mr. Gale. "And who was Mr. 
Gale ? " you ask. I know not, except that he 
was of so bland a nature I felt he must be a 
" Gale from Heaven." We were leaning over 
the rail of the vessel, watching the first appear- 
ance of land — Ireland sending out to meet us 
the " Skelligs," a cross-looking projection, like 
the snarly dog that comes out to serenade you 
with a volley of yelps at the gate of a friend, 
or like a dark-browed Fenian appearing to 
challenge the British ships, and bid them " mind 
their eye," and look out how they run " forninst 
ould Ireland" — when Mr. Gale summed up 
all his advice about European travel in the 
terse phrase : 

370 



"STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 37I 

" Mr. Talmage, do not be rushing about in 
Europe, as Americans generally do. Stay 
where you 'r^ happy ! " 

We set this down as among the wisest coun- 
sels ever given us, although at the very first 
place we stopped it nearly ruined our pros- 
pects for seeing anything beside Scotland. 

Americans travelling in Europe are for the 
most part in immensity of perspiration. Starting 
with what they call " the small and insignificant 
island of Great Britain," and having adopted 
the feeling of the Yankee who said he thought 
England a very nice little island, but he was 
afraid to go out nights lest he should fall off, they 
expect to see all Europe in a few days. They 
spend much of their time at depots, inquiring 
about the next train, or rush past Mont Blanc, 
with no time to stop, chasing up a lost valise. 

In our company was an American, who had 
five ladies and eight trunks. Getting into 
Switzerland, he let the ladles come on to see 
the mountains, while he went back a two days' 
journey, asking Belgium and Germany if they 
had seen anything of his trunks. As he Is 
unacquainted with the language, but has 



372 "STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY." 

learned that Das Gepack is the German for 
'' the luggage," I imagine him going through 
the streets of Heidelberg, Frankfort, and 
Darmstadt, at dead of night, shouting till the 
^people throw open the windows expecting a 
war-extra : 

" Das Gepack ! Das Gepack ! " 

Meanwhile we offered a little cologne to one 
of the unfortunate party bereft of their "things,'* 
and she refused to take it; and, on being urged, 
blushed, and hemm'd, and finally gave as her 
reason that she had no pocket-handkerchief. 
Alas ! her clothes by that time were on the 
way to St. Petersburg or Halifax. 

But why sneer at the father and husband on 
his errand of mercy scouring Europe for his 
wife's silk dresses? May he be prospered! If 
he do not find the chignons, may he at least 
be so happy as to discover the pocket-handker- 
chiefs ! What more Important than clothes ? 
But for a deficit in this, John Gilpin would have 
been respectable and happy, even at the time 
he could not hold his horse. Lack of this is 
what made Eve chilly in Paradise. 

As for ourselves, we carry all our baggage 



"STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 373 

in our two hands, and yet we have two changes 
of apparel a day ; namely, in the morning when 
we put it on, and in the night when we take 
it off. Nobody can steal our baggage unless 
they steal us. Often travellers, worn out with 
unnecessary incumbrances, wish they were 
home. They are not happy. They want to go 
to their mother. We found one American tug- 
ging along with a Swiss cottage nicely boxed 
up, the work of an Interlachen artificer. It. 
made us think of looking up a pocket edition 
of Jung Frau. 

Many of our countrymen are exceedingly 
annoyed at their lack of skill in the use of the 
European languages. After a vain attempt to 
make a Parisian waiter understand French, they 
swear at him in English. But we remembered 
the art of the physician who put all the remains 
of old prescriptions in one bottle, — the oil, and 
the calomel, and the rhubarb, and the assafoeti- 
da, — and when he found a patient with "com- 
plication of diseases," would shake up his old 
bottle and give him a dose. And so we have 
compounded a language for European travel. 

We take a little French, and a litde German 
32 



374 ''STAV WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 

and a little English, with a few snatches of 
Chinese and Choctaw, and when we find a 
stubborn case of waiter or landlord that will 
not understand, we shake up all the dialects 
and give him a dose. It is sure to strike 
somewhere. If we do not make him under- 
stand, we at any rate give him a terrible scare. 

We have not the anxiety of some in a strange 
land about getting things to eat. We like 
everything in all the round of diet, except ani- 
mated cheese and odorous codfish; always have 
a good appetite, never in our lives missed a 
meal save once, when we could not get any, 
and knowing that Eine gej^ostete Rindfleisch 
Schiebe means a beefsteak, Eine Messer2i knife, 
and Eine Gabel a fork, and Eine Serviette a 
napkin, after that we feel reckless as to what 
we can or can not get. 

In journeying from country to country, the 
change in the value of coins is apt to be 
inextricable. But guineas, and florins, and 
kreutzers, and double ducats cease to be a 
perplexity to us. We ask the price of a thing, 
look wise as if we knew all about it, and then 
hold out our hand and let him take his pick. 



"STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 375 

As riches take wings and fly away, we are 
determined to lose nothing in that manner. 
Fifty years from now a Turkish piaster will be 
worth to me as much as a Holland guilder ; 
and it worries me not when I am cheated, for 
the man who cheats must In the end suffer 
more than I, so that my chagrin is lost in com- 
passion for his misfortune. 

In travelling let us go where we like it best, 
and then be happy. The manufacturer should 
go to Birmingham and Manchester. The skil- 
ful and mighty-handed machinery will make 
an impression upon him that he can get from 
nothing else. Let the shipwright travelling in 
Europe take considerable time at the Liver- 
pool docks, and watch the odd-looking craft 
that hover about the French coast. The phi- 
lanthropist will busy himself in looking up 
Newman Hall's " Ragged Schools," and go 
out a few days to Bristol to talk with George 
Muller, and go down to Billingsgate to hear 
the women sell fish with the same slang as 
they did fifty years ago. Let the poet go to* 
Grub Street, Cripplegate, and, as the cab jos- 
tles through the dark and filthy street, look out 



3/6 "STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 

and see the places In olden time frequented 
by hungry authors, and have his sensibilities 
shocked at finding that John Milton's house, in 
which "Paradise Lost" was written, is now a 
soap factory. 

If a man be fond of a fine horse, and wants 
to see the perfection of neck, and hoof, and 
back, and flanks, tamed thunderbolts controlled 
by caparisoned drivers, let him go out every 
clear evening, at six o'clock, to Hyde Park, or 
into the Royal Mews, back of Buckingham 
Place, and see the one hundred and sixty-eight 
white and bay horses that wait the Queen's 
bidding. It is folly for a blind man to go to see 
Gleseback Falls, or a deaf one to hear the 
Freybourg organ, or a man whose lifetime 
reading has been confined to the almanac and 
his own ledger to spend much time in the 
Reading Room of the British Museum. Stay 
mily where you 're happy I 

At the hotel in Antwerp, sitting at the table 
at the close of a day that had been to me a 
•rapture among picture-galleries, a man sat 
down beside me, and said, '* What a dull place ! 
There seems nothing going on ! " He had 



"STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' Z77 

applied to that exquisite city of art the business 
tests of the Bank of England. That was no 
place for him. Why did he ever come out 
from the shuffle and tumult of the London 
" Strand " ? 

Much of the world's disquietude comes from 
the fact that they will not take the advice of 
the Encrlishman in the words headinor this 
chapter. Queen Mary was fondled and ca- 
ressed in France. Courts bowed down and 
worshipped her beauty. But she went to 
Scotland, and Elizabeth cut the poor thing's 
head off. Why did she not stay where she 
was happy? 

Walter Scott had a good home in Castle 
Street, Edinburgh, no debts to pay, all the 
world bringing offerings to his genius. But he 
went up to Abbotsford ; must have a roof like 
Melrose Abbey, and the grounds extensive as 
a king's park. He sank his fortune, and roused 
up a pack of angry creditors, each one with his 
teeth at his throat. How much better for his 
peace if he had continued In the plain home. 
Why did he not stay where he was happy? • 

Maximilian had the confidence of Austria, 
32* 



3/8 "STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY:' 

and the richest of all earth's treasures, — the love 
of a good woman's heart. He gathered up all 
that he had and went to Mexico. A nation of 
assassins plotted for his life. He fell riddled 
with a crash of musketry, and his wife, Carlotta, 
goes back a maniac. They had enough before 
they went. They wanted more. One dead ! 
The other crazy ! Oh, that they had been wise 
enough to stay where they were happy ! 





WAR TO THE KNIFE. 




ITHIN a few days I have seen Bel- 
glum, Switzerland, Prussia, and Ger- 
many marching to their frontiers, 
the two former for armed neutrality, the two 
latter for bitterest war, and before this para- 
graph reaches the United States, you will, by 
telegraph, have heard the first shock of battle. 
Last Sabbath, Brussels had the appearance 
of New York city just after the assault on 
Fort Sumter. The streets were a mass of 
excited people. Men were flocking in from 
the country as volunteers, and the soldiers 
in bright uniform were parading Rue de la 
Madeleine. As we passed up the Rhine we 
saw the fortifications swarming with busy men. 
Strange, that this most peaceful of all rivers 

379 



380 H'A/? TO THE KNIFE. 

should be the object of perpetual strife, and 
that at the sight of its pure, bright water, the 
kings of the earth should fall down in hydro- 
phobia of ambition. Long before the vine- 
yards that crowd to the lip of this stream shall 
have purpled into ripeness, war will have trod- 
den out its vintage of blood. From Mayence 
to Carlsruhe, on either side the rail-track, are 
earthworks that must have demanded the 
shovels and pickaxes of the entire population. 
The rail- carriages are filled with Frenchmen 
flying the country, the police commanding 
their departure. The harvests of Prussia, 
which look like those of Lancaster County, 
Pennsylvania, for luxuriance, are lodging for 
lack of a sickle, the men having gone to the 
war. At Cologne, the flowers and curiosities 
of the city gardens are being brought into the 
city so as to be under the defence of the forti- 
fications. 

The Prussians are enthusiastic, and ready 
for anything. They are glad that the conflict 
has come. They havebeen for years hindered 
in their enterprise by the arrogant behavior of 
France, and they want the matter settled once 



WAR TO THE KNIFE. 38 1 

and forever. Their officers and troops, so far 
as we have seen them, are a class of men that 
must excite the admiration of all who love 
nobility of character. 

They are honest, Intelligent, bold ; and 
though France, with her great discipline of 
military, may overcome them In the opening 
battles, Prussia mill never submit to France ! 

We called long enough to find that even 
lethargic Heidelberg had gone off in the ex- 
citement, leaving Its grand old castle and dirty 
streets for visitors to look at. 

The city of Basle, Switzerland, In which we 
are now stopping, has very nearly suspended 
business, for the purpose of seeing off her 
soldier boys, who, this morning at daylight, 
marched under our windows through the nar- 
row street, the trumpet sounding an air wild, 
brisk, and strange to our ears. The red tor- 
rent of patriotism rages down these hills and 
among these defiles. Though Belgium and 
Switzerland are armed for neutrality, they are 
as Indignant at France as Is Prussia ; and it 
would not require a very grave provocation to 
call them Into the great struggle. Where the 



382 IV A I^ TO THE KNIFE. 

trouble will end, God only knows. Until the 
name of Napoleon comes down into the dust, 
the world cannot have quiet. The power 
of one bad man to tear the world's heart to 
pieces, was never so mightily illustrated as at 
this hour. 

A woman rushed out of the crowd when 
Robespierre died, crying, " Murderer of my 
children ! descend to hell covered with the 
curses of every woman in France ! " But that 
is a moderate execration compared with that 
which we fear will come from all the outraged 
nations of Europe when Napoleon goes — to 
his uncle. 

There is no more glory in war. In the 
olden time, when Fitz - James and Roderick 
Dhu met at Coilantogle Ford, and threw their 
wrath into a combat that crimsoned Loch 
Vennachar, and made the crags of old Ben-an 
and Ben Venue echo with the sword-clang, 
there may have been romance and poetry in 
combat; but with such weapons as the new 
contrivance of death which France will bring 
into the battle, war is murder, compared with 
which that perpetrated by the hand of Antoine 



JVAJ^ TO THE KNIFE. 383 

Probst and a Five -Points garroter is inno- 
cence undefiled. 

Those who tell us that the millennium is 
about to begin, must have guessed wrong. 
We saw, a few days ago, in the Tower of 
London, an astonishing array of old armor, 
showing what a miff the world has been in for 
five hundred years. But we were pleased to 
see in one room how the swords and guns 
had, by some artistic hand, been arranged into 
representations of flowers; ramrods and sabres 
turned Into lilies and fuschais and Scottish 
bluebells. We offered a silent prayer that 
soon all the world's implements of death might 
so blossom. But, alas ! now the red dahlia of 
human blood shall paint the grass, and instead 
of the white-fleeced lamb, which Edwin Lan- 
seer in exquisite picture represents as look- 
ing Into the mouth of the dismounted gun 
of war, destruction and woe shall belch out 
of it. 

From the sight of this European tumult we 
turn away to the mountains of Switzerland, 
and hope to look upon Mont Blanc, that 
symbol of the Great White Throne on which 



384 



PVA/^ TO THE KNIFE, 



all the world's wrongs will be righted. The 
mountain gazes upon a few kingdoms, but the 
Throne will overlook France and Prussia and 
the world and the ages. 
Switzerland, July 21, 1870. 





FRESH PAINT. 




N art, as in everything else, things 
must pass for what they are worth. 
A feeble picture by Orcagna is none 
the less feeble because five hundred years old. 
I cannot admire his " Coronation of the Vir- 
gin," wherein he sets the angels to playing 
bagpipes. Even the Scotch Highlander ex- 
pects to put down his squealing instrument 
this side of heaven. There is no power in the 
centuries to consecrate a failure. Time has a 
scythe, but no trowel. Age, in the abstract, 
excites not my veneration. I must first know 
whether it is an old saint or an old sinner. 
The worst characteristic about some things is 
their longevity. A newly-laid egg, boiled just 
two minutes and a half by the watch, and 
placed on the table beside a clean napkin, is a 

3S Z 385 



386 FRESH PAINT. 

luxury to bless the palate withal ; but some of 
us remember that once in our boarding-house 
at school, we chanced at the morning meal to 
crack the shell of a Pre-Raphaelite ^gg, and, 
without " returning thanks," precipitately for- 
sook the table. Antiquity may be bad or good. 

As with physical vision, so in mental optics 
there are far-sighted men who cannot see 
things close by, while a quarter of a mile 
away they can tell the time of day from the 
dial on a church steeple. The sulphurous 
smell in Church's " Cotopaxi " makes them 
cough and sneeze, though, at the peril of un- 
hinging their necks from the spinal column, 
they will stand for hours, looking straight up 
at a homely Madonna by some ancient Italian, 
plastered on the rotunda of a Brussels cathe- 
dral. Having no sympathy with those who 
expend so much good-humor on the old mas- 
ters that they have nothing left for moderns, I 
shall speak of recent pictures, at the risk of 
rubbing against fresk paint. 

Americans, more than any other people, 
want to see the paintings of Joseph William 
Turner. John Ruskin has devoted more than 



FRESH PAINT. 387 

half of his working life making that painter 
more famous. But Ruskin's art - criticisms 
have nowhere been read as in the United 
States, for the reason that TJie Modern Paint- 
er's is published in a very cheap American 
edition, while the English publishers of that 
book present it only in expensive type and 
with costly illustrations, thus keeping it be- 
yond the reach of the masses. Though Turner 
lies beside Joshua Reynolds in the Cathedral 
of St. Paul, and his pictures have become 
the inheritance of the British nation, London 
knows little more of him than does New 
York. 

But nine out of ten of our friends returning 
from the National Gallery of England express 
sore disappointment with Turner's paintings. 
They think it strange that his canvas should 
excite the great intellect of John Ruskin for 
fifteen years into a seeming frenzy of admira- 
tion, so that he can write or speak of nothing 
else — enduring, in behalf of his favorite art- 
ist, all acerbity and flagellation, the masters 
of British and foreign schools bedaubing the 
brilliant writer with such surplus of paint as 



388 FRESH PAINT. 

they could spare from their own palettes, and 
pursuing the twain with such ferocity, that, 
though the first has hidden from his foes be- 
hind the marble of the tomb, and his defender 
has, in ruined health, retired to Denmark 
Hill, nevertheless the curses need some cool- 
ing yet. 

Our first glance at these pictures, covering 
the four walls of two rooms in the gallery, 
struck us back with violent disappointment. 
On our last look, on the last day of our visit, 
we felt an overcoming sadness that probably 
we never again should find such supernatural 
power in an artist. We say supernatural, for 
if we believe that Jeremiah and David and 
John had more than human power to write, I 
know not why it would be wrong to suppose 
that Paul Veronese, and Giotto, and Rem- 
brandt, and West, and William Turner were 
divinely inspired to paint. In the one case, it 
was parchment ; in the other, canvas. Here 
it was ink ; there it was colors. Now a pen ; 
then a pencil. Was it not the same power 
which handed Raphael's "Transfiguration" 
across four centuries that has conveyed to this 



FRESH PAINT. 389 

present time the New Testament? I never 
felt so deeply the suffering- of the Saviour, 
when reading the description in Luke and John, 
as when standing in the cathedral at Antwerp. 
Looking at the " Crucifixion," by Rubens, I 
was beaten down and crushed In soul, and, 
able to look no more, I staggered out, faint, 
and sick, and exhausted, the sweat dropping 
from every pore. 

I will not advocate the supernal inspiration 
of any of these men, ancient or modern ; but 
must say that the paintings of William Turner 
exerted over me an Influence different from 
anything I have experienced. The change 
between my first and last look of this British 
artist is to be explained by the change of 
stand-point. No paintings in the world are so 
dependent upon the position occupied by the 
spectator. Gazed at from ordinary distances, 
they are insipid, meaningless, exaggerated. 
You feel as if they had not been done with a 
pencil, but a broom. It seems that each one of 
them must have taken two quarts of stuff to 
make it as thick as that. You* almost expect 
the colors to drip off — you feel like taking your 



390 FRESH PAINT. 

handkerchief and sopping up the excess. 
But, standing close up to the opposite wall, 
you see a marked improvement ; yet, even 
then, the space between you and the picture 
is too small. You need to pass through into 
the next room, and then, looking through the 
doorway, fasten your eye on the painting. 
Six paces off, and Turner's " Decline of Car- 
thage "is a vexation; but twenty- two paces 
off, with an eye-glass, and Turner's " Decline 
of Carthage " is a rapture. From the last 
stand - point, looking at " The Spithead," we 
felt like dividing our life into two portions — 
that which had occurred before we saw Turner, 
and that which might occur afterward. 

This master shifted his style four times. 
No one mood lasted him long. So many a 
man looks back, and finds that his life has 
been a series of fits. Perhaps very young in 
literature, he had a fit Tupperian. Passing 
on a few years, and he was taken with a fit 
Byronian. Getting into calmer waters of life, 
he was attacked with a fit metaphysical. As 
might be expected, from being out so much in 
the fog, he took a violent fit Carlylean. Then, 



FRESH PAINT. 39I 

at the close of life, he reviewed his intellectual 
gyrations ; and, disgusted with his ramblings, 
he had a fit of common sense, which was such 
a sudden change from anything preceding that 
it killed him. It is easy to trace Turner 
through a variety of artistic spasms, but he is 
always entertaining. 

We cannot forget his " Caligula's Palace : " 
the magnificence of destruction ; the ages of 
the past looking through the ruined porticos 
and shivering on the top of the broken marble ; 
the bridge, in its leap across the bay, struck 
with a death^ of desolation that leaves it a 
skeleton in the way ; children playing in the 
foreground, their diminutiveness and simplicity, 
by the contrast, piling up the height of the 
towers, and the gorgeous pretension of the 
imperial domain ; the sun rising just high 
enough to show that carved pillars of stone 
belonging to a kingly fool are but dust when 
the " Rock of Acres " crashes aorainst them. 

o o 

Who can forget the light that Turner pours 
on Venice, the Campanile of San Marco, the 
Dogana — light falling with the positiveness 
of a pebble, but the diffusiveness of a liquid — 



392 FRESH PAINT. 

light that does not strike on the water and 
stop there, but becomes transfused and inter- 
mixed — nay, which, by matchless chemistry 
of color, becomes a part of the wave, so that 
you cannot say which is light and which is 
water : gondolas variegated, dropping all their 
hues into the wave — gondola above, gondola 
beneath, and moving keel to keel. Light, 
though so subtle that it flies from other touch, 
Turner picked up, nor let it slip through his 
fingers till it touched the canvas. John Mar- 
tin, the Northumberland painter, tried to catch 
the light, but instead thereof caught the fire 
that burns up many of his fine pictures. 
Turner's light is neither a hot element to con- 
sume nor a lifeless thinof that mio^ht be called 
a mere pallor on the cheek of the darkness, 
but so natural you hardly know whether it 
drops from the sky-window into the gallery, 
or was kindled by the hand which for twenty 
years has been mouldering in the crypt of 
Saint Paul Cathedral. 

What water Turner painted ! The waves 
of the sea knew him. No man could pour 
such moonlight upon the Thames as he ; or 



FRESH PAINT. 393 

could SO well run the hands of the sea up and 
down the sides of a stranded ship ; or could 
so sadden the Hellespont with the farewell of 
Leander ; or toss up the water in a squall so 
natural that you know the man in the fishing- 
smack must be surprised at the suddenness ; 
or so infuriate the Channel at Calais that you 
wish you did not, on your way home, have to 
cross it; or could have dropped a castle- 
shadow so softly and yet so deep into a 
stream. The wave of William Turner was 
not, as in many pictures, merely wet white- 
wash, but a mingling of brightness and gloom, 
crystal and azure, smoothed down as a calm 
morning tramples it, or flung up just as the 
winds do it. 

Then, all this thrown into a perspective so 
marked, that, seeing it for the first time, you 
feel that you never before knew what per- 
spective was. You can hardly believe that the 
scene he sketches is on the dead level of the 
wall. You get on the bank of his river in 
" Prince's Holiday," and follow it back through 
its windings, miles away, and after you think 
you will be compelled to stop, you see it still 



394 FRESH PAINT. 

beyond, and when you can no more keep the 
bank, you see in still greater distance what 
you say may be cloud, and may be water, but 
you cannot decide. Turner can put more 
miles within a square foot than any one we 
know of. There are always back-doors open- 
ing beyond. But his foreshortening is quite 
as rare. Often his fishermen and warriors 
and kings are not between the frame of the 
picture, but between you and the canvas. 
You almost feel their breath on your cheek, 
and stand back to give them room to angle, or 
fight, or die. 

After exploring miles of pictures, the two 
on secular themes that hang in my memory, 
higher than all, deeper than all, brighter 
than all, are Turner's "Parting of Hero and 
Leander ; " and Turner's " Palace and Bridge 
of Caligula." And there they will hang for- 
ever. 

Yet his rivals and enemies hounded him to 
death. Unable longer to endure the face of a 
public which had so grievously maltreated him, 
with a broken heart he went out from his ele- 
gant parlors on Queen Anne Street, to die in 



FRESH PAINT. 395 

a mean house In Chelsea. After he was life- 
less, the world gathered up his body, played a 
grand march over it, and gave it honored 
sepulture. Why did they not do justice to him 
while living ? What are monuments worth to 
a dead man ? Why give stones when they 
asked for bread? Why crack and crush the 
jewel, and then be so very careful about the 
casket? Away with this oft-repeated grave- 
yard farce ! Do not twist into wreaths for 
the tomb the flowers with which you ought 
to have crowned the heated brow of a living 
painter. 




./T-:. 





BRUTES. 

DWIN LAXDSEER has come to a 
better understandinor of the brute 
creation than has any other man. 
He must have had a pet spaniel, or cat, or 
horse, that in hours of extreme confidence 
gave him the secret grips, signs, and passwords 
of the great fraternity of animals. He knows 
the language of feathers, the feeling of a sheep 
being sheared, of an ox goaded, and the 
humiliation of a dosf when kicked off the 
piazza. In presence of Landseers hunted 
stag, you join sides with the stag, and wish 
him escape from the hounds ; and when pur- 
suers and pursued go tumbling over the rocks 
into the mad torrent beneath, the reindeer 
with lolling and bloody tongue, and eye that 

.396 



BRUTES. 397 

reels Into its last darkness, you cry "Alas!" 
for the stag, but " Good ! " for the hounds ; 
and wonder that the painter did not take the 
dogs off the scent before the catastrophe. 

Was ever a bay mare more beautifully 
shod than, In Kensington Museum, Landseer 
shoes her. The blacksmith-shop Is just such 
a one as we rode to, with rope-halter on the 
horse's head, and when, barefoot, we dis- 
mounted, the smith of the leathern apron, and 
rusted spectacles, and hands seemingly for five 
years an exile from wash-basins, bade us look 
out how we trod on the hot Iron. Does any- 
thing sound more clearly through the years 
than the wheeze of the old bellows, and the 
clanor of the sledcre- hammer, and the whistle 
of the horse-tail brush with which we kept off 
the flies ; while, with the uplifted and uneasy 
foot of the horse between the workman's legs, 
he clenched the nail, clipped off the ragged- 
ness of the hoof, and filed smooth the surface, 
the horse flinching again and again, as the nail 
came too near the quick ? And then the 
lightning of the sparks as the hammer fell 
on the red-hot iron, and the chuck and siss 

34 



398 BRUTES. 

and smoke of the bar as it plunged Into the 
water - bucket ! Oh ! there was a rugged 
poetry in a blacksmith -shop, and even now 
the sound of the old wagon-tire at the door 
rouses me up like a war-whoop, and in the 
breath of the furnace I glow with memories. 
Only a few months ago, I walked into a city 
blacksmith-shop, and asked if at any time I 
could get a horse shod there. You see, there 
might be a time when I would buy a horse, 
and he might need such services ; but our 
chief reason for going in was that we wanted 
to see if such a place looked as it did of 
yore. 

As Landseer lifts the back foot of the bay 
mare, the wrinkles of her haunches are warm 
with life, and her head turns round most nat- 
urally to oversee the job, as much as to say : 
" Be careful how you drive that nail," or, 
"Your holding my hoof is very uncertain." 
On behalf of all the horses which go limping 
with ill-set shoe and nails in the hock, I thank 
this blacksmith. I know he is doing his 
work well, or, from the spirit of the mare, he 
would before this have been hurled into the 



BRUTES. 399 

middle of the turnpike — hammer, apron, and 
nail-box. 

No one so well as Landseer can call up a 
bloodhound, and make him lie down in the 
right place — a decided case of armed peace. 
You treat him well, not so much because of 
your respect for dogs, as out of consideration 
for your own interest. Walk softly about him 
and see the great reefs of hide — more skin 
than a dog needs, as though he had been 
planned on a larger scale, but after he had 
begun to be filled in, the original plan had 
been altered. See the surplusage of snarl in 
that terrier, and of hair on that poodle, and 
how damp he is on the end of his nose ! 

And here you find one of Landseer's cows, 
full-uddered, glad to be milked. You will see 
the pail foam over soon if that careless milk- 
maid does not upset it. Bless me ! I have 
seen that cow a hundred times before. It is 
the very one I used, in boyhood, to drive up 
as the evening breeze was rustling the corn- 
silk, and making the tall tassels wave like the 
plumes of an Indian warrior squatting in the 
woods: a cow of kindly look, the breath of 



400 BRUTES. 

clovei sweeping from her nostrils, meeting me 
at the bars with head through the rails, and 
low moan of petition for the barn-yard. 

Even the donkey is introduced with a loving 
touch in Landseer's pictures. Now, a man 
who can favorably regard mule or ass is a 
marvel of sympathy. I am in fresh memory 
of a mule in the Alps. He might as well have 
lived on Newark Flats, for all the good fine 
scenery did him. With what an awkward 
tread he carried me up to the Mer de Glace, 
jerking backward and forward, so that I was 
going both ways at once, but, nevertheless, 
slowly advancing, because the jerk forward 
was somewhat in excess of the jerk backward. 
The flies were ravenous, and to catch one of 
them he would stop mid-cliff, throw one foot 
up till he struck my foot in the stirrup, as 
though he proposed to get on himself, and 
then would put his head back, till nothing save 
a strong grip of the saddle kept me from see- 
ing the Alps inverted. But have the fly he 
would, reckless of shout and whip, and thump 
of heel in the side. Mules are stubborn, 
crafty — unlike men, in the fact that they look 



BRUTES. 401 

chiefly after their own interests (?) ; but these 
brutes are not very intelligent, considering, 
from their ears, how large an opportunity they 
have of hearing. They have most imperfect 
intonation, and but little control over their 
voice. When a donkey begins to bray, it 
seems he does not know when he will be able 
to stop, or whether the voice will rise or fall in 
its cadences. But donkeys cannot help this, 
and for their sins they are to be pitied. 
Therefore, Edwin Landseer calls them into 
his pictures. What a kind man he must be ! 
Blessed the dog that fawns at his feet, the 
horse that draws his carriage, the cat that 
mews on his window-sill, the deer that ranees 
through his park ! Thrice blessed their mas- 
ter! 

Animals in Europe are more sympathized 
with than in America. I see no over-driven 
horses, no unsheltered cattle, no cracking away 
at birds with old blunderbusses, just for the 
sake of seeing the feathers flutter. When, on 
the 1 2th of August, all England and Scodand 
go a-grouse-hunting, and Perth and Aberdeen 
and Inverness and Chatsworth are shaken with 

34* 2 A 



r 



402 BRUTES. 

a continuous bang of sportsmen, there is no 
cruelty. It is an honest lift of the gun, a fair 
look across the barrel, a twitch of the fore- 
finger of the right hand, a flash, and game for 
dinner at Peacock Inn or Elephant and Castle. 
You see more animals in bronze and stone 
in Europe than in the United States. If young 
Americans, wanting quills to write with, have 
plucked the American eagle, till, featherless, 
and with an empty craw, it sits on the top of 
the Rocky Mountains wishing it were dead, 
the English have paid quite as much attention 
to the lion. You see it done up in every 
shape, sitting or standing, everywhere. The 
fountains are guarded with lions; the entrances 
of houses flanked with lions; the signs of stores 
adorned with lions, — fighting lions, sleeping 
lions, crying lions, laughing lions, couchant 
lions. English artists excel with this animal. 
When French and German sculptors attempt 
one, it is merely a lion in the abstract, too 
weak to rend a kid, and never having seen a 
jungle. But lying on the base of Nelson's 
monument in Trafalgar Square are four lions 
that look as though they had a moment before 



BRUTES, 403 

laid down there and curled their long tails 
peacefully around, and had just stopped there 
a few minutes to see what was going on at 
Charing Cross and the Cockspur. 

On the top of Northumberland House is a 
lion with mouth open and tail extended in rigid 
rage, so that it is uncertain which way to run, 
as you know not with which end he will as- 
sault you. There are more lions in London 
than in Numidia. Beef and mutton are liked 
well by the Englishman, but for regular diet, 
give him lion. 

European horses look better satisfied than 
American. They either have more fodder or 
less drive. The best-kept horses I ever found 
are in Antwerp. I saw but one lean nag in 
that city, and that one I think was an emigrant 
just arrived. When good American horses 
die, they go to Antwerp. 

Europeans caress the dog. He may lie on 
the mat or sit near the table. Among the 
Alps we had a wretched dinner — not lacking 
in quantity or variety, but in quality. There 
was enough of it, such as it was. The eggs 
had seen their best days, and the mutton must 



404 BRUTES. 

have been good for two or three weeks after 
they killed it. A Saint Bernard dog sat near 
by, petitioning for a morsel. The landlord 
was out — we saw by the bill of fare we should 
have high rates to pay — we could do nothing 
ourselves toward clearing the plates, and so 
we concluded to feast our friend of Saint Ber- 
nard. We threw him half an omelet, assuring 
him first that the amount we gave him would 
depend on the agility with which he caught it. 
Either not understanding French, or being 
surprised at the generosity of the provision, 
he let half the omelet fall to the floor, but he 
lost no time in correcting the failure. We 
threw him a mutton-chop. With a snap of the 
eye and a sniff, and a long sweep of the tongue 
over the jaw, he said by his looks as plainly as 
if he had spoken with his lips : " I like that 
better. I never get mutton-chops. I think 
they will agree with me." When the landlord 
came in, he suspected that some unusual pro- 
ceeding had taken place between his guests 
and the dog, and so he kicked him out of the 
room. The remainincr sin within us suofaested 
our treating the landlord as he had treated the 



BRUTES. 405 

mastiff, but our profession, and more espe- 
cially the size of the man, restrained us. I left 
the inn more sorry to leave Bernard than his 
keeper. 

Among the worthiest dogs of the world, or 
rather of the church, are the Saint Bernards. 
They have no frisk of merriment. The shadow 
of the great ledges is in their eyes, and the 
memory of travellers lost in Alpine snows is 
in their hearts. When you meet them, cheer 
them up with chops and omelets. 

European cities are not ashamed to take 
some bird or beast under their patronage. 
Venice looks especially after her pigeons. 
Strasburg pets the storks whose nests are on 
almost all the chimneys. Berne carefully 
guards her bears. Egypt apotheosizes cats. 
Oh, that the cruelty of man to bird and beast 
might come to an end ! They have more right 
to the world than man, for they preceded him 
In the creation, the birds having been made on 
Friday and the cattle on Saturday morning, 
and man coming: in at the faof-end of the week. 
No wonder that these aborigines of the world 
sometimes resist, and that the bees sting, and 



4o6 



BRUTES. 



the bears growl, and the cats get their backs 
up, and dogs bark, and eagles defend their 
eyries with iron beak, the crags echoing with 
the clangor of this flying squadron of the sky. 

London, August 27th, 1870. 






A NATION STUNNED. 

HE lonof finorer of the oceanic tele- 
graph may write on the multiform 
sheet of the '' Associated Press " the 
news of victory or defeat; but no one not 
stopping in Paris to-day can realize the condi- 
tion of things. The city is dazed and con- 
founded. Paris never before came so near 
keeping Sunday as on the first day of this 
week. Not many concerts, but little convivi- 
ality, and no carousal — it did not seem like 
Sabbath at all. August 15th, the Emperor's 
/S^e day, the Fourth of July of France, fell 
dead in front of the Tuileries. Instead of 
Paris on fire with illumination, the streets 
were dull, and the palace, as we passed 

along at night, had but one lighted window, 

407 



408 A NATION STUNNED. 

save the light of the employes in the base- 
ment. 

Whatever may be one's opinion in regard 
to the French Government, he must sympa- 
thize with this afflicted people. Before this 
paragraph reaches the United States, the pen- 
dulum of feeling may have swung from the 
extreme of sorrow to the extreme of joy ; but 
not once in a hundred years does Paris sit in 
ashes. She knows how to shout in a carousal, 
and to howl in a massacre ; but it is the 
strangest thing of the century to see Paris in 
a "fit of the blues." 

Yesterday we drove out on the Bols de 
Boulogne, which might be called " the Central 
Park " of Europe ; and in all the ride we 
passed not a single vehicle. At a concert on 
Saturday night we heard the Marseillaise 
Hymn so gloriously sung by soldiers, in full 
uniform, with flags and guns, that we involun- 
tarily threw up our hats, not knowing exactly 
what we were excited about ; but the general 
applause that responded to the national air 
was not as lively as you might hear in any 
place of amusement in the United States on 



A NATION STUNNED. 409 

any night of the year. I know not but that 
this quiet may be the lull before the tempest 
of fire that shall sweep back the Prussians 
from the French frontier ; but Paris sits dumb- 
struck to-day. 

The prizes that were to have been given 
last week in the schools have been withheld. 
There is no sound of laughter or mirth. Even 
intoxication has a subdued voice, and men 
stagger around having a quiet drunk. Many 
of the fountains accustomed to dance in the 
light are still, or only weep a few doleful drops 
into the stone basin. With thirty-seven news- 
papers in Paris, there is no news. A placard 
of a few lines on the walls of the city, about 
every other day, announces something very 
unimportant. We get occasionally a London 
Times, but are left chiefly to our imagination ; 
and when our friends ask us what the news is, 
we tell them that the Dutch have fallen back 
on Amsterdam, and the Germans advanced to 
Darmstadt. 

Tourists are in a panic. Americans rush to 

the steamship offices, wanting to go on the 

Cunard, Inman, or National Line, or even a 
35 



4IO A NATION STUNNED. 

first-class schooner ; and almost ready, were It 
not for the anxiety of their friends, to go afoot. 
Some of our friends who have never seen 
Paris dart down from Switzerland to this city, 
and take the first train for Calais, expecting to 
be massacred before they get across the city. 
We have concluded to risk it a little longer. 
As we have come on a tour of sight -seeing, 
we shall stay till we see all ; trusting first in 
the good Providence which has always seen us 
through, and secondly upon our American 
passport. 

This, of all summers, has been the best for 
travelling in Europe to those who happened 
to take Germany first. The climate has been 
so delicious that we have not suffered from 
one hot blast. The hotels, heretofore surfeited 
with patronage and unobliging, now give the 
best rooms and most obsequious attendance. 
You have your pick of a dozen carriages, each 
one underbidding the other. You have a 
whole rail - carriage for your own party. 
Though there be but one American newspa- 
per in the reading-room, no one else wants it. 
You look at the pictures without the imperti- 



A NATION STUNNED. 4II 

nence of any one passing before you. There 
is plenty of room in the diligence for Cha- 
mouni. You buy things at cheap rates, be- 
cause there is no rivalry among purchasers. 
You hear bands of martial music enlivening 
the air by day and night. 

And, besides that, one feels it grand to be 
here at a point of time which must be as im- 
portant in history as 1572, when the belfry of 
St. Germain L'Auxerrois tolled for the horrors, 
of St. Bartholomew's day. And who would 
blame me if my pen should this moment trem- 
ble a little along the line as I write, within 
hearing distance of the place where the mob 
hurled the four hundred massacred Swiss 
guards from the king's balcony, and only a 
few steps from the place where the chop of 
the guillotine tumbled the head of Marie An- 
toinette into the dead-box. 

May the torch of Parisian splendor never 
through the pool of human blood go hissing 
out into darkness ! The torn and shotted 
battle -flags of France hang in the chapel of 
Hotel des Invalides, where the old soldiers 
worship. Oh ! that the banners of the Prince 



412 A NATION STUNNED. 

of Peace might be set up in the Tuileries ! 
The Arc de Triomphe has In letters of stone 
all the battle-fields of the first Napoleon. Oh ! 
that soon, under the arch of heavenly triumph, 
Immanuel might come up from the conquest 
of all the nations. In the illumination of that 
victory there will be no light of burning home- 
steads ; in the wine of that feast there will be 
no tears. 

In a week we start for home. The most 
welcome sight to us in three months will be 
the faces of our friends. / am tired of resting. 
Speed on the days between this and the best 
rest that a man ever gets on earth — the joy 
of preaching the gospel which offers to make 
all men happy and free ! In body, mind, and 
soul I thrill with the anticipation. 






|HERE have been men with power to 
absorb a city. It matters not which 
way you walk in Edinburgh, you 
find Walter Scott, and see the unparted hair 
combed down straight on the great dome 
of his forehead. You are shown Walter 
Scott's cane, and Walter Scott's jack-knife, 
and Walter Scott's white hat, and Walter 
Scott's residence. After two hundred years, 
Peter Paul Rubens carries Antwerp in his 
vest-pocket. The citizens adore him. You 
are taken to see Rubens' house, and to 
look at Rubens' statue, and to study Rubens' 
pictures, and at the mention of his name the 
face of the dullest Belgian is illuminated. 
The sceptre that sways Antwerp to-day is a 
painter's pencil. 

35* 413 



414 "A^." 

Coming to Paris, you find a more powerful 
memory presiding oyer everything. It Is not 
a name that you see, but simply an Initial In- 
scribed on pillar, and wall, and arch, and 
chapel. You go Into the Hotel de Vllle, a 
place where architecture, and painting, and 
sculpture have done their best: statues, and 
fluted columns, and ceilings supported by 
elaborate caryatides, and stairs so gracefiil 
they do not climb but alight, and galleries not 
so much set fast as seemingly on the wing ; 
gold twisted, and carved, and chased into all 
the witcheries of beauty ; and after you have 
walked from rich apartments to the richest, 
you look upon a platform, on which there is one 
empty chair, In the upholstery of which is em- 
broidered the initial, " N." 

You go into the Pantheon, that holds Its 
crowned head higher than all other structures 
in Paris, a building bewildering with attrac- 
tions, whether you look down to its exquisite 
mosaic floor, or aside to its carved oaken 
chapels, or through white clouds of sculptured 
saints and apostles Into the frescoed dome 
bright with the wings of angels flying in the 



midst of heaven ; and as your eye slips from 
the dizzy height and comes falling down from 
balustrade to capital, you see encircled by a 
wreath the initial, N. 

Louis XV., who laid the corner-stone of 
this building, would not have liked that letter 
put there. Charles, who went into raptures 
with the church, would have objected to such 
an inscription. Marat, with all his hardness, 
would have opposed the marking of a reli- 
gious structure with any human name save 
his own. Yet so it is, no L for Louis, no C for 
Charles, no M for Marat; but on right and 
left, and where least you might expect it, the 
inevitable N ! N ! 

You go into one of the rooms of the Louvre, 
and you are shown Napoleon's saddle, and 
Napoleon's watch, the hands at seven minutes 
past three, the moment he died, and his last 
gray coat, the summer worms having eaten in 
it two or three holes, for there is nothing that 
moth may not corrupt; and knife, and cup, 
and chess-board, on which he played out his 
games of war in miniature. You look up to 
see the name of the room. Right over the 



416 . . "iV." 

door, any man who knows his letters may 
discover it, N ! 

There is no mistaking this initial for any- 
thing else. B might be taken for an R, or C 
for an O, or I for a J ; but in the letter spoken 
of there are two perpendiculars, and between 
them a line dropped aslant from the top of 
one to the bottom of the other ; and there 
you have it so that you can see it anywhere, 
the unmistakable N ! 

If you want your stay in Paris to be climac- 
teric, leave till the last your visit to the tomb 
of Napoleon. As you go into the gate, an old 
man, who was with the great Frenchman at 
St. Helena, will sell you a poor picture of 
something that no photographist can catch. 
It Is a cathedral three hundred and twenty- 
three feet high, having cost two million dollars, 
dedicated to one dead man. Under its bur- 
nished dome is a concentration of wonders. 
Not his ashes resting there, but the embalmed 
and undecayed body of Napoleon, in military 
suit, in a red sarcophagus of Finlander quartz- 
ite, polished to the last perfection by skilful 
machinery, and resting on a block of green 



N." 



417 



granite, surrounded by twelve funeral lamps 
of bronze, and twelve marble statues of great 
size, one with a wreath, as if to crown ; 
another with a pen, as if to make record for 
the ages ; another with a key, as if to open 
the celestial gate for a departed spirit; an- 
other with trumpet, to clear the way for the 
coming of a king ! The pavement enamelled 
into a crown of laurels, from which radiates on 
all sides a living star. There are gilded gates, 
and speaking cenotaphs and radiant canopy, 
and elaborate basso-relievos, and embossed 
pillars, and two Persian statues, holding on 
cushions a sceptre and a world, and ceilings 
a -blossom with finest frescos by French and 
Italian masters, their light dripping down the 
marble in blue, and saffron, and emerald, and 
gold. 

Oh ! it is a dream of beauty ! If the dead 
Giant could wake up and look around, he 
might think he lay in the Moscow palace that 
he coveted, and the glistening whiteness around 
were the morning shining on Russian snows, or 
that universal empire had come to him ; and 
to make his palace Egypt had sent its por- 

2B 



41 8 "^." ^ 

phyry, and Switzerland its marble, and Greece 
its sculpture, and Rome its pictures, and France 
its bronze ; and that the reverential spectators 
in all kinds of national costume, leaning over 
the balustrade to look, were the adoring sub- 
jects of a universal reign. 

At last we thought we had found a building 
that had escaped the all -conquering initial. 
From dome to base all is so significant of this 
one great man that no inscription will be neces- 
sary ; but turning to the window the old spec- 
tacle trembled upon my sight, in gilt, all by 
itself, N ! 

And Paris is thus signed through and 
through; and when the 15th of August comes, 
it is written out in fire on Boulevard and arch, 
on Champs Elysees and Bois de Boulogne, in 
front of restaurant and palace, under the silk 
veil of lighted fountain, and on the night in 
sky-rockets, N, N, N. 

All this may be well, but the thought comes 
to us that great men are expensive luxuries. 
We are told that Napoleon was the benefactor 
of the world. If you admit it, then, I ask, 
were his achievements worth the two great 



«iV." 419 

highways of bone-dust reaching across Europe, 
showing which way he went out, and which way 
he came in ? Were they worth a continent of 
destroyed families, and the myriads of souls 
flung away into smoke of battle ? Were his 
bones worth the hundreds of men who, com- 
ing out to do him honor, froze to death on 
the day his remains were brought back to 
Paris ? Were his achievements worth the two 
million and a half dollars that he spent on his 
triumphal arches, and the two millions that 
built his tomb ? Answer the question as you 
may, great men are expensive luxuries. 
Paris, August 25 th. 





PICTURES FELT. 




NE of the aorgrravations of a travel- 
ler's life is the being compelled to 
give but four days to a gallery that 
demands as many years. As we hasten 
through, we feel the fingers of worn artists 
pulling us back, as much as to say : " Is this 
the way you look at what it took years of pri- 
vation and toil to do ? " Rembrandt says : 
" You did not see that wrinkle in the old man's 
face. It took me weary hours to sink that!" 
MuUer says : " You did not notice the twist of 
straw in that upturned chair ! " Delacroix won- 
ders that we pass his river Styx without a tear 
over the distressed boatmen. Guerin upbraids 
us for slighting that drapery which he was a 

month in hanging. Yet we break away and 

420 



PICTURES FELT. 421 

push on, In a few hours of time passing 
through a seeming eternity of painstaking. 

But, as after days of walking through 
strange cities, there are only five or six faces 
among the multitudes that you remember, so 
we recall only a few of the thousands of pic- 
tures along which we have passed. 

PAUL VERONESE. 

Going through the Louvre at Paris, we 
were arrested by "The Marriage at Cana." 
In two minutes we are one of the guests. 
We are not looking at representations of 
faces, but feel the presence of one hundred 
and twenty people. At first we are crowded, 
but soon all stand back to their places, and 
you are undisturbed by the multitude. We 
cannot doubt that It Is genuine ivine ; you are 
sure of the absence of logwood and strych- 
nine. Wine kept twenty years Is a rarity, but 
Paul Veronese mingled this three hundred 
years ago, aijd it has Improved by age. How 
true the stoop of the servant as he pours out 
the wine from the amphora Into the cup, 

his chief feeling one of care, lest the liquid 
36 



422 PICTURES FELT. 

spill. He is not much astonished at the mirac- 
ulous change that has come on the water. 
His head is thick through from temple to tem- 
ple. He would not be surprised if the vessel 
poured apricots. It is his duty to empty the 
liquid from the larger to the smaller, and that 
is all he cares about. 

But you look around to see how the guests 
take it. This one looks incredulously at the 
glass. He hardly thinks it is wine. He 
prides himself on the fact that he cannot be 
deceived. He is ready to admit the transform- 
ation. He will keep on tasting it till the cup 
is emptied once and again, and then will say, 
"There may be wine in it. Indeed it tastes 
like it ; but I will not commit myself It is 
a dangerous precedent. After a while we shall 
have things so mixed up we will not know 
when we are drinking wine and when water. 
For my part, when I pour water into a jar, I 
prefer to pour nothing save water out." 

But here is a guest who has eye and hand 
lifted toward heaven. He feels that the God 
of the vineyards and the springs must, with 
his finger, have stirred the amphora. Here is 



PICTURES FELT. 423 

an abstracted, philosophic face. The man sees 
not so much the flushed water as the lone line 
of conclusions that must flow from it. It is 
not with him a mere question whether his 
tongue is being laved with the insectiferous 
water of Galilee, or tingling with a beverage 
that moment brewed at the door of the ban- 
quet-hall. It is with him a question between 
jugglery and omnipotence. From the rim of 
that glass radiate the eternities. 

There sits a woman waiting for the glass to 
'come up. She simply wants a drink. She is 
very red. Evidently the wine that had been 
passed before the miracle was not as good as 
this. One cup will not do for her. Pass up 
one of the big ewers. I see now why the first 
quantum of wine so soon gave out. She looks 
upon this affair solely as one of supply and 
demand. I do not like her. I wish that Paul 
Veronese had not invited her. Notwithstand- 
ing her fine dress, she is not fit for this com- 
pany. Let her go home and guzzle in private. 
She will be drunk before the night is over, 
unless the new refreshments are free from 
intoxicating quality. The biggest fool on 



424 PICTURES FELT. 

earth is a handsome, gayly-dressed woman, 
when she has taken three glasses too many. 
At the foot of the picture are a cat, two 
dogs, and a clown, with parrot and bells. This 
unseemly fellow is evidently swelling with 
inflammation of witticism. He feels out of 
place. He has, amid this miraculous scene, 
no chance to ply his trade. A professed joker 
is in Purgatory on a serious occasion. Wit 
is healthy only when mingled with sense, as 
. hydrogen is a necessity in pure air, but when 
alone is poison. The evident idea in the pic- 
ture is to make a striking contrast ; but I can 
see no good reason for introducing the cat, 
and the scrawny dogs, and the loathsome 
clown, save that the clown might be set after 
the dogs, and the dogs after the cat, and they 
all become so engaged in the chase they would 
never come back again. 

It seems to us that Paul Veronese has made 
the accessories of the picture too imposing. 
You wonder why they allowed the wine to 
give out in such a sumptuous place. There 
are the water-jars finely chiselled, and the pil- 
lars grandly capitalled, and the walls preten- 



PICTURES FELT. 425 

tiously statued. The servants bend as If their 
backs would break under the burden of viands 
still coming in. The plates at this late hour 
in the feast are still nearly full. If all the par- 
aphernalia represented by the painter were 
true, then the exhaustion of the wine must be 
either ascribed to paucity of calculation on the 
part of the host, or extraordinary thirstiness 
of the oruests. Not willino- to believe either 
of these, we are disposed to think that the 
scene of the wedding was really an humble 
home, and that the provider of the banquet, 
in inviting so many more than he could feast, 
only proved that his heart was bigger than his 
purse. 

But this picture lifts itself up royally in the 
Louvre, bidding back into forgetfulness many 
of the statues, bas-reliefs, Apollos, and Dianas 
that were best looked at about midnight with- 
out a candle. One of the great wants of 
Parisian art-galleries is more fig-leaves. But 
this picture stands out pure and exalted. 
Blessed are the eyes that see it ! Marriage 
is no more a carousal, but a sacrament. Bid- 
ding back all the shadows of his own life, 
36* 



426 PICTURES FELT, 

Christ sits here th*;. King of banqueters. And 
while we see the glowing beverage passed 
around, we catch a glimpse of the time when 
the wine-cup carried down into the Babylon 
of dissipation shall be brought back, and set 
upon our tables, and there shall no more be 
the eyeball of death in the bubble on the top, 
nor the sting of adders wriggling in the dregs 
at the bottom. 

THOMAS WEBSTER. 

To this painter there^ was given a revelation 
of boys. Between six and fourteen years of 
aofe the masculine nature is a mixture of mis- 
chief, and sensitiveness, and spunk, and fun, 
and trouble, and pugnacity, that the chemistry 
of the world fails to analyze. A little girl is 
definable. She laughs when she is pleased, 
cries when she feels badly, pouts when she is 
cross, and eats when she is hungry. Not so 
with a boy. He would rather go a-nutting 
than to eat, forgets at the fish-pond he has not 
had his di iner, often laughs when he feels 
badly, and looks submissive to an imposition 
practised ipon him till he gets the perpetrator 



PICTURED FELT. 42/ 

alone in the middle of the road, and tumbles 
him into the dirt till eyes and mouth and 
nose are so full the fellow imagines that, before 
his time, he has returned to dust. A boy, 
under a calm exterior, may have twenty emo- 
tions struggling- for ascendency. 

After a boy has been tamed by hard disci- 
pline, and wears a stock, and has learned to 
walk down street without any temptation to 
"skip-skop," and sees only nonsense in leap- 
frog, and enjoys Calvin's Institutes above Rob- 
inson Crusoe, and feels feathers on the elbows 
premonitory symptoms of cherub, he ceases to 
be a mystery. But Thomas Webster, in " The 
Dame School " in Kensington Museum, Lon- 
don, gives us the unperfected boy such as we 
more frequently see him, namely, boy in the 
raw. This creature is somewhat rough, and 
uncertain as to where he will break out, super- 
latively susceptible to tickle, is bound to lose 
his hat, and comes in red in the face from just 
having swallowed his slate-pencil. 

Thomas Webster, in this picture, manages 
boys and girls perfectly. There he places the 
spectacled old schoolmistress. I remember 



428 PICTURES FELT, 

her perfectly well, although I have not seen her 
since I was eight years old, and yet I would 
have known her anywhere by her nose. Fifty 
hot summers have dried up all the juices of 
her nature. Her countenance is full of whack 
and thump, and the gad she holds in her hand 
is as thick at one end as the other, not mod- 
erating into any mercy of thinness. It would 
never be mistaken for the rod that budded. 
Boys studying " Rule of Three " look round 
at her to study rule of one, and, in multiplying 
the sum of school troubles, carry nine when 
they ought to carry nothing. How sharp her 
eyes are ! The boys sitting on the opposite 
side of the room feel her look on their back 
clear through the fustian. 

There is the cracked and peeling wall. 
There are the hats, and bonnets, and satchels. 
There is a little girl threading a needle. She 
will have to twist tighter the end of the thread 
or she will never get it through that fine head. 
She will soon be able to hem handkerchiefs, 
and to take stitches for her mother. May she 
never have to sew for a living, sorrow and an- 
guish and despair bigger than a camel going 



PICTURES FELT. 429 

through the eye of her needle ! Here is a boy 
prompting another in the recitation, telHng 
him wrong, I am certain. There always was 
some fellow to get us into trouble with geogra- 
phy, grammar, or arithmetic lesson, telling us 
that the capital of Virginia is Texas, and that 
baboon is a personal pronoun, and that in every 
whole there are three halves and six quarters. 

There is a little girl crying over her lesson. 
Why cannot somebody show her? Napoleon 
getting his ammunition wagons over the Saint 
Bernard pass had nothing to do compared 
with the tug of a little child making her first 
trial at spelling ''bakery The alphabet to 
many has been twenty-six tortures. Here 
stands a little girl with her finger in her 
mouth. The schoolmistress has not seen it, or 
she would put an end even to that small con- 
solation. School is no place for a bee to suck 
honey out of a flower. A boy is looking 
through a sheet of paper, which he has rolled 
into a scroll like a telescope — he is probably 
an astronomer in the early stages. 

Here is a plodding boy, prying away at his 
books. He suffers many impositions from his 



430 PICTURES FELT. 

comrades. Away ! you young scamps with 
those sticks with which you are annoying him! 
When a joke is told, and the children laugh, 
he will turn around with a bashful and be- 
wildered look, imagining himself the victim 
of the satire, but next day will cackle out in 
the quiet of school-time at the sudden discov- 
ery of the meaning of the witticism. But he 
may yet outstrip them all. When a boy's 
head is so thick it is hard for knowledge to 
get in, the same thickness prohibits its depart- 
ure. Give him thirty years, and he will make 
a dictionary. 

There a boy makes faces, and the whole 
school is in danger of runninof over with 
giggle. It is an awful thing for a child not to 
dare to laugh when the merriment rises, and 
wells up till the jacket gets tight, and the 
body is a ball of fun ; and he knows that if 
out of one of the corners of his compressed 
lips a snicker should escape, all the boys 
would go off in explosion. I remember times 
when I had at school such responsibility of 
repression resting on me, and proved unfaith- 
ful. 



PICTURES FELT. 43 1 

There ! to severely correct them, a boy and 
girl are placed beside each other — a style of 
punishment greater at that age than ever after. 
Here is a boy making way with an apple be- 
hind his lifted book. I expect some one will 
cry out, " John Greed is eating an apple ! " for 
it is a peculiarity of children under ten years 
of age (?) that they do not like others to 
have that which they themselves cannot get. 
Whether it be right or wrong, in their estima- 
tion, depends on whether themselves or some- 
body else has the apple. 

Just outside the school-room door is a boy 
showing his strength. As he turns up his arm 
in the light, he says, through the art of the 
painter, "Do you see that muscle?" He is 
good at a wrestle, can run round all the bases 
at one stroke of the bat, can take the part of 
a wronged urchin, and I fear, if the school- 
dame comes too suddenly at him with the stick, 
she may lose the glass out of her spectacles. 
There will be no Sunday-school books made 
about him, although out of his brawn of body, 
and mind, and soul, there may yet come an 
Oliver Cromwell, or a Martin Luther. 



^ 



432 PICTURES FELT. 

Thank Thomas Webster for taking us back 
to school by his painting ! It is the only way 
we should like to go back. We had rather be 
almost anything than a boy, the world so little 
understands him. 

ROSA BONHEUR. 

We owe not more to the painters than to 
the engravers, although for the most part we 
let them sit, with worn fingers and half-extin- 
guished eyes, begrudging them the few shil- 
lings we pay them for their expensive work. 
They are mediators between us and the great 
pictures of the world. They popularize art. 
The people, through drinking these lighter 
wines, feel the taste for pictures growing on 
them, till they must have the stronger and 
intoxicating potions of art, mixed by a Rem- 
brandt or Claude-Lorraine. And so we can 
see Raphael's "Transfiguration" without going 
to Rome ; Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Supper " 
without going to Milan ; Angelo's " Three 
Fates " without a-oino- to Florence ; and Rosa 
Bonheur's "Horse Fair" without going to 
London. 



PICTURES FELT. 433 

But there are many of the best pictures that 
have never attracted the eng-raver s art, and, 
for the most part, the v^orld is ignorant of 
them. In Luxembourg Gallery, at Paris, 
hanging in a very poor light, or rather first- 
rate darkness, is a hay - gathering scene, by 
Rosa Bonheur. After for hours looking upon 
helmets, and swords, and robes, and prim par- 
terres, where grass does not grow without 
asking the gardener, and there are impossible 
horses on impossible roads, carrying impossible 
riders, I came upon this country-scene, in imagi- 
nation threw myself down on the grass, and 
unbuttoned my shirt-collar to let the air of the 
fields strike the skin clear down to the chest. 
The weather is showery. It will rain in twenty 
minutes. The men, aware of this, are hasten- 
ing in the load. The hair of this workman is 
soaked with sweat, and hangs in strings, as if just 
out of a dripping bath. The women work so 
awkwardly you feel that the place for them is 
the house. The one on the load is evidently 
not so anxious to pack the hay as to save her 
own neck, in case the oxen should start. She 
feels it a risky business on an uneven field to 

37 2C 



434 PICTURES FELT. 

Stand on a rocking load. A rosy, white-capped 
maiden, of seventeen years, standing with rake 
in hand, does not work very fast. She is at 
an age when maidens are apt to take it some- 
what easy. She does not think it will hurt the 
hay much if it does get wet. Besides that, the 
shower may pass around. A workman is 
looking at her bright face. He, too, has for- 
gotten the showery weather. No use, my dear 
fellow ! You are too old for her. From her 
absent look, I know she is thinking now of the 
nightfall, and of some one who will come in 
clean smock, tying his horse at the gate. The 
oxen stand waiting for orders to go on, calm, 
stupid, honest, sinewy-necked, a skein of foam 
hanging from their lower lip. 

On this ox's back a fountain of sweat starts, 
but is dissipated in the thick gloss. In this 
dark ox, the night of the face is dawning Into 
light beyond the hill of the shoulder. They 
look like the yoke that answered our own 
command of "• Whoa ! haw ! gee ! " needing to 
have the language translated by an occasional 
stroke of the goad, determined to get Into the 
shadow of a tree though the load upset, taking 



PICTURES FELT. 435 

plenty of time, with the exception of some 
very uncertain starts In fly -time, hardly ever 
so resigned as when It Is their duty to stand 
still. 

Oxen were only intended for very good 
people to drive, for It demands grace to do It. 
The man who excused himself from going to 
the king's feast because he had bought a yoke 
of oxen, gave a more plausible excuse than 
the others ; for I suppose the new team had 
balked, or upset the wagon, or had really 
started for the king's house, but came with so 
lazy a gait that their master was not In time 
for the entertainment. 

But we say nothing against these faithful 
creatures. They do heavy work for small 
compensation — a few carrots and a forkful of 
hay. They pant in the heat and shiver in the 
cold, and, shutting their eyes and dropping 
their horns aslant, they press through the hail- 
storm. The Bible says that God takes care 
for oxen. 

The next best thing to being in the country 
is to have Rosa Bonheur, in a picture-gallery, 
plunge us Into a hay-field. The stroke of a 



436 PICTURES FELT. 

reaper's rifle on the scythe is to me a reveille. 
The past comes back, and in a moment I am 
a boy, with a basket of luncheon, on the way 
to the men in the harvest-field, finding them 
asleep under the trees, taking their "nooning." 
Their appetites were sharper than their whetted 
scythes. Those men are still taking their noon- 
ing under the trees, but it is a sounder sleep. 
Death has ploughed for them the deep furrow 
of a grave. 

I forgive Rosa Bonheur that she smokes 
cigarettes, and wears a rowdy hat, and is fond 
of lounging about slaughter-houses, now, as I 
stand before this picture of the hay - scene. 
Like the bewitched workman who looked into 
the maiden's face, we forget it is showery 
weather, until it is four o'clock, and the guard 
of the gallery, with cocked hat, and red sash, 
and flaming sword, comes round to drive us 
out of Paradise. » 





CHA.MPS ELYSEES. 

HE scarlet rose of battle is in full 
bloom. The white water - lily of 
fear trembles on the river of tears. 
The cannon hath retched fire and its lips have 
foamed blood. The pale horse of death stands 
drinking out of the Rhine, its four hoofs on 
the breast-bone of men who sleep their last 
sleep. The red clusters of human hearts are 
crushed in the wine-press just as the vineyards 
of Moselle and Hockheimer are ripening. 
Chassepot and mitrailleuse have answered 
the needle-gun; and there is all along the 
lines the silence of those who will never speak 
again. 

But Paris has for an interval, at least, 
recovered from her recent depression. Yes- 

31- 437 



^ 



438 CHAMPS ELYSEES. 

terday I stood at the foot of the Egyptian red- 
granite obelisk, dug out three thousand four 
hundred years ago, and from the top of which, 
at an elevation of seventy-two feet, the ages 
of the past look down upon the splendors of 
the present. On either side the obelisk is a 
fountain with six jets, each tossing Into the 
bronze basin above ; a seventh fountain, at still 
greater elevation, overflowing and coming 
down to meet them. Ribbons of rainbow 
flung on the air: golden rays of sunlight 
interwoven with silver skeins of water, while 
the wind drives the loom. Tritons, nereids, 
genii, dolphins, and winged children disport- 
ing themselves, and floods clapping their 
hands. 

From the foot of the obelisk, looking off to 
the south, is the Palace of the Legislature — Its 
last touch of repairs having cost four million 
dollars — its gilded gates, and Corinthian col- 
umns, and statues of Justice, and Commerce, 
and Art, and Navigation — a building grand with 
Vernet's fresco, and Cortot's sculpture, and 
Delacroix's allegories of art, and the memory 
of Lamartlne's eloquence ; within it the hard 



CHAMPS ELYS^ES. 439 

face of stone soft with gobelin tapestry, and 
arabesque, and the walls curtained with velvet 
of crimson and gleaming gold. 

From the foot of the obelisk, glancing to 
the north, the church of the Madeleine comes 
into sight. Its glories lifted up on the shoulders 
of fifty - two Corinthian columns, swinging 
against the dazed vision its huge brazen 
doors, Its walls breaking Into innumerable 
fragments of beauty, each piece a sculptured 
wonder : a king, an apostle, an archangel, or 
a Christ. The three cupolas against the sky, 
great doxologles In stone. The whole build- 
ing white, beautiful, stupendous — the frozen 
prayer of a nation. 

From the foot of the obelisk, looking east 
through a long aisle of elms, chestnuts, and 
palms, Is the palace of the Tullerles, confront- 
ing you with one thousand feet of facade, and 
tossed up at either side Into Imposing pavil- 
ions, and sweeping back Into the most brilliant 
picture-galleries of all the world, where the 
French masters look upon the Flemish, and 
the black marble of the Pyrenees frowns upon 
the drifted snow of Italian statuary : a palace 



440 CHAMPS ELYSEES, 

poising its pinnacles in the sun, and spreading* 
out balustrades of braided granite. Its inside 
walls adorned with blaze of red velvet cooling- 
down into damask overshot with green silk. 
Palace of wild and terrific memories, orgies of 
drunken kings, and display of coronation fes- 
tivity. Frightful Catharine de Medicis looked 
out of those windows. There, Maria Antoin- 
ette gazed up toward heaven through the 
dark lattice of her own broken heart. Into 
those doors rushed the Revolutionary mobs. 
On that roof the Angel of Death alighted and 
flapped its black wings on its v/ay to smite in 
a day one hundred thousand souls. Majestic, 
terrible, beautiful, horrible, sublime palace of 
the Tuileries. The brightness of a hundred 
fete days sparkle in its fountains ! The gore of 
ten thousand butcheries redden the upholstery! 
Standing at the foot of the obelisk, we have 
looked toward the north, and the south, and 
the east. There is but one way more to look. 
Stretching awa)' to the west, beyond the 
sculptured horses that seem all a-quiver with 
life from nostril to fetlock, and rearing till you 
fear the groom will no longer be able to keep 



CHAMPS ELYSiES. 44I 

them from dashing off the pedestal, is the 
Champs Elysdes, the great artery through 
which rolls the life of Parisian hilarity. It is, 
perhaps, the widest street in the world. You 
see two long lines of carriages, one flowing 
this way, the other that, filled with the merri- 
ment of the gayest city under the sun. There 
they go ! viscounts and porters, cab-drivers of 
glazed hat taking passengers at two francs an 
hour, and coachman with rosetted hat, and 
lavender breeches, his coat-tails flung over the 
back of the high seat — a very constellation of 
brass buttons. Tramp, and rumble, and clat- 
ter ! Two wheels, four wheels, one sorrel, two 
sorrels ! Fast horse's mouth by twisted bit 
drawn tight into the chest, and slow horse*s 
head hung out at long distance from the body, 
his feet too lazy to keep up. Crack ! crack ! 
go a hundred whips in the strong grasp of the 
charioteers, warning foot-passengers to clear 
the way. Click ! click ! go the swords of the 
mounted horse-guards as they dash past sashed, 
feathered, and epauletted. 

On the broad pavements of this avenue all 
nations meet and mingle. This is a Chinese 



442 CHAMPS ELYSEES. 

with hair in genuine pig - tail twist, and this a 
Turk with trowsers enough for seven. Here, 
an Enghshman built up solid from the founda- 
tion, buttressed with strength; the apotheosiza- 
tion of roast-beef and plum-pudding ; you can 
tell by his looks that he never ate anything that 
disagreed with him. Here, an American so 
thin he fails to cast a shadow. There, a group 
of children playing blind-man's buff, and, yon- 
der, men at foot-ball, with a circle of a hundred 
people surrounding them. Old harpers play- 
ing their harps. Boys fiddling. Women with 
fountains of soda-water strapped to their back, 
and six cups dangling at their side, and tink- 
ling a tiny bell to let the people know where 
they may get refreshment. Here, a circle of 
fifteen hobby-horses poised on one pivot, where 
girls in white dresses, and boys in coat of many 
colors swing round the circle. Puff of a hun- 
dred segars. Peddler with a score of balloons 
to a string sending them up into the air, and 
willing for four sous to make any boy happy. 
Parrots holding up their ugliness by one claw, 
and swearing at passers - by in bad French. 
Canaries serenading the sunlight. Bagpipers 



CHAMPS ELYSEES. 443 

with instruments in full screech. " Punch and 
Judy," the unending joke of European cities, 
which is simply two doll-babies beating each 
other. 

Passing on, you come upon another circle 
of fountains, six in number — small but beauti- 
ful, infantile fountains, hardly born before they 
die, rocked in cradle of crystal, then buried in 
sarcophagus of pearl. The water rises only 
a short distance and bends over, like the heads 
of ripe grain, as though the water-gods had 
been reaping their harvest, and here had 
stacked their sheaves. And now we find toy- 
carriages drawn by four goats with bells, and 
children riding, a boy of four years drawing 
the rein, mountebanks tumbling on the grass, 
jugglers with rings that turn into serpents, and 
bottles that spit white rabbits, and tricks that 
make the auditor's hat, passed up, breed rats. 

On your way through the street, you wander 
into grottos, where, over colored rocks, the 
water falls, now becoming blue as the sea, now 
green as a pond, and now, without miracle, it 
is turned into wine. There are maiden -hair 
trees, and Irish yews, and bamboo, and magno- 



444 CHA MPS E L YSE E S. 

lias, and banks of azaleas, and hollies, and you 
go through a Red Sea of geraniums and 
dahlias dry-shod. You leave on either hand 
concert-castles, and party-colored booths, and 
kiosks inviting to repose, till you come to the 
foot of the Arc de Triomphe, from the foot of 
which radiate eleven great avenues, any one 
of which might well be a national pride, and 
all of them a-rumble with pomp and wealth, 
and the shock of quick and resonant laughter. 
On opposite sides of the archway are two 
angels, leaning toward each other till their 
trumpets wellnigh touch, blowing the news of 
a hundred victories. Surely never before or 
since was hard stone ever twisted into such 
wreaths, or smoothed into such surfaces. Up 
and down frieze and spandrel are alti-rilievi 
with flags of granite that seem to quiver in the 
wind, and helmets that sit soft as velvet on 
warrior's brow; and there are lips of stone 
that look as if they might speak, and spears 
that look as if they might pierce, and wounds 
that look as if they might bleed, and eagles 
that look as if they might fly. Here stands an 
angel of war mighty enough to have been just 



CHAMPS elys£es. 445 

hurled out of heaven. On one side of the 
Arch, Peace Is celebrated by the sculptor with 
sheaves of plenty, and chaplets of honor, and 
palms of tridmph. At a great height, Auster- 
litz is again enacted, and horse and horsemen 
and artillery and gunners stand out as though 
some horror of battle had chilled them all into 
stone. 

By the time that you have mounted the 
steps, and stand at the top of the Arch, the 
evening lamps begin a running fire on all the 
streets. The trees swing lanterns, and the 
eleven avenues concentrating at the foot of the 
Arch pour their brightness to your feet a very 
chorus of fire. Your eye treads all the way 
back to the Tuileries on bubbles of flame, 
and stopping half-way the distance to read, in 
wierd and bewitching contrivance of gas-light, 
an inscription with a harp of fire at the top 
and an arrow of fire at the bottom, the charmed 
words of every Frenchman, 

CHAMPS ELYSEES! 



38 




/ 



HCy -4 1847 



